Humility, Sleeplessness, Repression, and More Self Indulgence
In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts. You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?
--Rapper and Producer Kanye West, Rolling Stone, 2006
At the same time last week that I was writing about self-indulgence, a fellow blogger was writing about humility. Talk about being on separate pages. While I’m making a case for ditching restraint, he’s singing the praises of those who are able to do the opposite, and do so humbly to boot.
While I can’t say I’ve lost any sleep specifically over my recent defense of self-indulgence, I have been losing sleep. And during my recent fits of wakefulness, I’ve been looking inward and contemplating humility, and how it has inserted itself into my life, if only occasionally.
At the risk of sounding cliché (or worse, quoting a really bad country and western song) it’s really hard to be humble. These days anyway, and these days, in this country in particular. We’re Americans. Pride is an asset. A necessity.
We buy American. We support our troops. We fly flags in our front yards and tack little Christian fish or “re-defeat Bush” bumper stickers onto our fenders. We pin ribbons to our lapels to announce our homage to cancer survivors or AIDs victims or the ribbon-honored recipient of that day. We tie Christmas wreaths onto the grilles of our SUVs. We proudly display for the world all kinds of signage on our cars and in our yards and in our windows and on our office desks with the specific intent of bragging about our children’s grades or the sports they play, or the kinds of pets we have and love, how we vote and who or what we vote for, or how we feel about the French. We fasten cartoons and mottos onto our refrigerators that remind us of what we think and how we feel, who we are and what we believe.
And then we teach our children to be modest and humble: Don’t brag. Don’t boast. Be polite. Be a gracious winner. Be a good sport. No need to toot your own horn. No one likes a know-it-all... We don’t seem to be putting our money where our collective mouths are. My fellow blogger wrote:
“A person of deep and mature humility recognizes and accepts the gifts he has, and delights in them *as gifts* and not as good things of his own manufacture. He does not set himself above the world because of his gifts, but instead puts his gifts into service for the world… Humility is living with the understanding that the ability to achieve is a gift… We can put it to use, or waste it. But we should also remember that ‘to whom much has been given, much will be required.’*”
While this blogger certainly writes with a heavy Christian influence which I admittedly have been known to balk at, I like some of what he has to say, starting with the assertion that humility is founded on gratitude. (I’m going to ignore the need to address to what or whom one should be grateful.)
I disagree with the notion that one must recognize any special abilities or talents as specifically outside oneself. To my mind, that implies a creator who needs our gratitude. And besides that, what would be the point? You need not denounce responsibility for your achievements in order to be humble. You can own your talents without being proud of or arrogant about them. Can’t you?
But I strongly agree with the notion that there should be a sense of obligation that accompanies one’s talents. I (perhaps naively) believe that many of the world’s problems could be solved if more people were beholden to a stronger sense of personal responsibility. And I think what this blogger means by gratitude is the first step to achieving a strong sense of personal responsibility.
Consider Kanye West, for example, a young and successful in-your-face musician/rapper/producer. If he refuses to take his musical talent for granted, if he feels grateful for his gift to the degree that he believes himself obliged to DO something with it that serves others, hasn’t he humbled himself by definition? I’d like to think he has. And I believe he would have more than fulfilled his duty (the “much will be required” part) regardless of whether he’s serving G-d or man(kind). So long as he’s not serving himself. If his image is not one of humility, is that image really going to defeat or undo his actions, his intention? Maybe. I just don’t know. Part of me hopes not.
Maybe it’s a question of our time more than anything else. I’d say repression is on the outs. I just don’t see many young men and women coming of age in the 2000’s for whom I’d worry that their repression would prevent them from fulfilling their destiny: not so many withdrawn and introverted rapper types following on the coattails of Mr. West.
Perhaps if I am fortunate, I will keep looking inward until I am awakened by own state of sleeplessness, stimulated by my own repression, humbled by my own shameful self-indulgence.
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* This is an indirect quote from the New Testament. Luke 12:48, I think. Look at me, quoting the New Testament. Well, quoting someone who quoted the New Testament…
Comments
One does not have to recognize--or believe in--the Orchardist to be delighted with and grateful for fruit from his trees. I try not to get into people's faces about what I believe, but it is nearly impossible not to see where I'm coming from much of the time.
I don't think talents and abilities exist outside ourselves, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression. There is a difference between innate gifts--talents and abilities--and the charisms, what Christians refer to as gifts of the spirit. Like much else in our times, the distinction has been lost or muddled, and in some ways it's only reasonable that it should be. Ours is not an age of precise thinking; we are too enamoured of facts and feelings.
Modesty, in its fullest sense, is not a theological virtue, because it does not require a theological orientation to the world to adopt or defend. Humility, I think, probably is a theological virtue...but I'm not sure I could prove that without cracking open a few books to check some things out.
Let us consider the Roman custom of a Triumph. Search for Roman Triumph on the web, or check the WIkipedia entry at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_triumph
It is difficult for me to imagine anything less modest or humble than a Roman Triumph, but even in the days when Rome was a Republic, a slave followed the triumphator to remind him that he, too was mortal, and would eventually die.
Until that time, however, he was a hero, and he revelled in it, as did the SPQR--the senate and people of Rome.
Glorification of personal attributes and achievement were the norm in ancient pagan societies; the difference between the barbarians outside the rule of Rome and the Romans was a degree of magnitude and formality, not of kind. The development of Civitas, or civic virtue, in Rome required control and ordering of self promotion... and it was also a political bulwark against a ppoular general seizing all the reins of power (until Julius & Augustus, of course)
But I do go on.... perhaps I should take this up in detail on my own site.