What is humility by definition? I mean we know that being modest is having humility but what exactly? When I searched for its definition, it said; having low view of one’s importance. I don’t know how to explain the feeling I got reading that. Giving your own self less importance is the bravest thing anyone can ever do.
Self esteem is very important. If you don’t love yourself you can’t love others which by the way reminds me of UNICEF’s campaign against violence among children. #BTSLoveYourself #Endviolence. So yeah, loving yourself helps you understand the true feelings of an individual and when you have a grip on how I feel in a certain situation you’ll understand how others feel and what ticks them. You value yourself that leads you to valuing others BUT people often mistake ego for self respect. There is a very thin line between the two. Valuing yourself that doesn’t hurt others is self respect but valuing yourself too much that it hurts other makes it ego and then it eventually dissolves you from inside out. But we don’t see that, do we? For example if we are in an argument and we realise that we were wrong, what do we do if the person we are debating with is one who always looks up to us? We think if we admit our mistake our value will be decreased or that person won’t look up to us anymore. That fear leads to not admitting what we did wrong we call it ‘’SELF RESPECT’’. It’s not. It’s ‘’EGO’’. Or another example would be if we help someone, we brag about it to every other person without thinking about the embarrassment that person would feel. I mean we are the nation of the Prophet (P.B.U.H.) who said to do good in a way that if you help others with your right hand, don’t let the left one know about it. Meaning help and forget i.e. never mention it again not even to yourself.
I was recently reading the autobiography of the most influential philanthropist of Pakistan ‘Edhi Sb’. And God the amount of humility that man had. Wow! Since he was a child he used to donate money to the needy. He used to put the money on their doorstep, ring the bell and run away so that they wouldn’t recognise him or be embarrassed in front of him. And whenever he needed money for his social work, he just used to go stand on the road and ask people for money. He even became a begger and didn’t feel any shame in doing so because it was for a cause. He could’ve asked organizational sponsors and if couldn’t find those, give up, but he did not. He realised and understood the true meaning of humility, self love, self respect and public service. He knew what the hour needed and he processed accordingly. He became a vagrant but didn’t feel embarrassed because it was for those hundreds of children in his orphanage, it was to make this society better. And we can’t even let go of little folly grudges we have with others.
Learning from the example of Edhi Sb, maybe this is Humility:
To engage in honest conversation and pure work without the attachment of ego sucking out the life of the interaction. Humility requires humor, love, and even a certain sense of detachment. But still, all the time, digging for those un-mined nuggets of truth.
