How to be the king of humility
Allow me to drive somebody nuts with this
Dear H,
Years of my spiritual insights, deft criticisms of social contagions, and talk of things like reason and virtue might lead somebody out there — poor bastard! — to think of me as a saint. But the real secret to my happiness is I know I’m a clown.
I get better every year at mastering the Cardinal Virtues, of course; but what I’m best at is the unmentioned virtue that doesn’t win you any statues, and that virtue is humility. I should have gotten a trophy for it by now, but people think this defeats the purpose — and they’re wrong.
Humility is the art of knowing your place*. You can reach for the virtues but you can’t always be them — at least not for too long, and a humble person knows it. Once you think you are them you get knocked off your pedestal, and it’s embarrassing; so the most comfortable place to set up base camp is low. You can climb from this sea-level position for short bits of time and aim and posture all you like, and get lots of spiritual exercise, and dream; but you can’t fall from it, so that’s where you should try to put yourself. Because gravity is real, and it always wins. Genius today, idiot tomorrow**.
People like to praise humility and then pretend like getting humbled is a terrible thing — as if realizing your limitations and getting a level head are a disgrace. What “getting humbled” means is you got your brains back. You landed on sure footing. No longer run amok by dreams of your own grandeur, yodeling light-headedly in the too-thin air of jagged mountaintops, you sit quietly on the fertile grasslands of reality — unshook by whatever it is you really are.
No delusions here of your own perfection. No surprises or pretenses or trap doors or landslides. The cynic maintains his happiness by leveling the world***. The humble man stays happy by leveling himself. Pride goes before a fall isn’t a likelihood, but a certainty. You start taking yourself too seriously and that’s when you turn out to be the punchline.
Unlike the other virtues, humility isn’t impressive — but it’s lovable. It might not get you ballads, but it can win you allies. It isn’t pretending you’re the same as everyone else — a bald-faced lie, when you really consider it****. Humility looks like asking forgiveness before the other party even suggests it, being the first to reach out and end a quarrel, listening to the other side’s ideas and really considering their merits, making jokes at your own expense*****, adapting to a situation instead of continuing in the wrong direction, being a general and sleeping on the ground with your troops, asking for help when you don’t know what to do, and crawling around on all fours with your children on your back. Humility sounds small but it allows you to encompass all of life, to grow into better things, to make and keep allies and good friends and devoted followers, to impart a good idea when others would just fight over it. I said the virtues bleed into one another, and they do. Humility isn't an exception, and when you really start talking about it, it looks a hell of a lot like genius.
Yours,
-J
May 5, 2021
*What does a man with a really big ego forget? That family are the only people who really love and care about you, and almost everybody else is just a mercenary.
One of them cries for you when you’re down. They’ll search for you forever if you ever go missing. And if they can’t find you, they’ll always wonder where you are. The other one forgets you when you stop making them laugh, or earning them cash, or helping them win, or getting them off.
We could love our neighbors more, but this would probably just end in disaster. God gave us small families because we’re guaranteed to lose them, and we can only handle the heartbreak so many times. We’ve been blessed to forget the rest of us — so I thank God I’m able to be forgotten.
**H.L. Mencken writes of cynicism,
One of the most curious human delusions lies in the theory that cynics are unhappy men — that cynicism makes for a general biliousness and malaise. It is a false deduction, I believe, from the obvious fact that cynics make other men unhappy. But they are themselves among the most comfortable and serene of mammals; perhaps only bishops, pet dogs and actors are happier. For what a cynic believes, though it may be too dreadful to put into formal words, at least has the merit of being true — and truth is ever a rock, hard and harsh, but solid under the feet. A cynic is chronically in the position of a wedding guest who has known the bride for nine years, and has had her confidence. He is a great deal less happy, theoretically, than the bridegroom. The bridegroom, beautifully barbered and arrayed, is about to launch into the honeymoon. But the cynic looks ahead two weeks, two months, two years. Such, to borrow a phrase from the late Dr. Eliot, are the durable satisfactions of life.
***The Psalmist says there are six – psych, seven! – things the Lord hates, and one of them is haughty eyes. Personally, I would have guessed He laughs at them, because once I start thinking I’m great I end up laughing at myself.
****Just because I’m humble doesn’t mean I’m average. I don’t think of myself as equal to junkies and I don’t measure myself by Joe Plumber. If I fly above them it’s because I size myself up with King David. To keep humble, to keep level, is also to keep from sinking into the sewers — by constantly judging yourself by the angels. Are you great? Compared to what?
Machiavelli put it much better:
I point to the greatest of men as examples to follow. For men almost always walk along the beaten path, and what they do is almost always an imitation of what others have done before. But you can’t walk exactly in the footsteps of those who have gone before you, nor is it easy to match the virtues of those you have chosen to imitate. So a prudent man will always try to follow in the footsteps of great men and imitate the truly outstanding, so that, if he isn’t quite as skillful as they are, at least some of their ability might rub off on him. One should be like an experienced archer, who, trying to hit someone at a distance and knowing the range of his bow, aims at a point above his target — not so his arrow will hit the point he’s aiming at, but so, by aiming high, he can reach his actual objective.
*****A joke at your own expense is a weapon.
Make a joke about somebody else’s behavior and they might get offended. But if you’re both guilty they’ll laugh along with you, and if you’re trying to teach them something they’re more likely to buy it.
We all know that misery loves company. But probably moreso, so do the guilty.
A joke at your own expense is taking the lowest seat, as Christ commanded. And you’ll find that when you do it well, you get promoted from punchline to professor.