Keeping it real

Want to achieve humility? Acknowledge reality | Andrée Seu

"Be humble." Go ahead: On your mark, get set, go be humble. What? You're not concentrating; try harder! Make like a Stanislovsky actor and dredge up feelings of self-deprecation. Shoot for that low opinion of your talents that you're sure is the essence of humility. You may not get there, but the devil will be pleased enough by all the time you've spent thinking of yourself. Or you may indeed arrive at humility, and notice it—which saddles you with another problem: pride in your humility.

I recall only one moment of true humility in my life. A friend had come to see my newborn daughter 26 years ago, and I exclaimed, uncharacteristically, "Isn't she beautiful!" My friend replied with a polite chuckle something to the effect that I was humility-challenged. I can tell you, brothers, that it was years before I ever breathed another word of praise about a child of mine. The odd thing though—and the thing my visitor could not have known—is that she had caught me in a rare instance of total self-forgetfulness. Never have I been so free from pride or fear of man as in that exclamation. It was all God and wonder and nothing else.