My Pi-Spective on Humility

(A pi-spective is where you write about something in 314 words)

Humility is such a hard thing to get right. We place ourselves in the centre of the events of our lives. Often times we're simply bit part players. But we don't like the implications of this and rewrite the story. Sometimes we just happen to be in the right place at the right time.

This is synchronicity, or serendipity if you prefer. Though serendipity has an element of seeking to it whereas synchronicity is about you just happening to be in a place. The point is that, even though things just happen, we can ascribe them as happening because of us. Our ego is driven to claim some form of agency in events that may have had little to do with us at all.

Humility is about accepting what comes our way with thanks and being content. It's original sense was 'being close to the earth'. Being grounded is a good modern interpretation. There are lots of similar phrases. 'Keeping both feet on the ground' is a good one. All to do with humility.

The ego puts us in difficult places and humility will get us out of them. The difficult thing with humility is that we are here to make a difference and we strive to this end. In the process we can become enamoured of ourselves and what we do. There is an inevitable settling of accounts. If we have placed ourselves at the centre of the story, then we go to a place of loss. We rage, grieve and shake our fist at the world.

Accepting that the part we play in the great scheme of things is a hard ask. We live in an age of ego-centric narcissism where we are also encouraged to be purposeful and be all that we can be. Sometimes it's best to just be content with who we are now. We can find freedom there.