Humility is on my mind today. I’ve been thinking about what it means to me. The recognition that I’m fallible is a core feature of this. I have an awareness that my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors intermittently don’t take me in the direction that I want to go. Or is it more accurate to say that they only intermittently take me in my chosen direction?
Another element is my recognition that I have experienced many privileges and benefits that were not of my own creation. Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that jazz.
This also makes me think of sin as originally meaning to “miss the mark.”
And was it Saint Augustine who talked about doing the thing he hates?
Being humble is about your own awareness of the fact that you do miss the mark at times. It isn’t defined by specific behaviors in relation to others. Though, I imagine awareness of one’s own fallibility would lead to certain kinds of interactions with others.
#philosophy
2024-01-25