Thoughts on humility

A sideways glance, a sigh, no eye contact – yes, I have seen that before. It’s the yuppie who has just entered the cosmopolitan world of money and power – a world that is new and enticing, where he thinks he can conquer the world and conquer it all.

Humility is seen as a virtue by many peoples and cultures and placed in high regard, especially by Asian cultures.  Recently, I was in a few situations where I started thinking about humility and how people practice it.  In New York City, where everything is dense, people, streets, emotions, drama and life, I have found that certain individuals trade humility for pretentiousness.  In a city where the first questions someone asks are what you do and where you live, the pressure to conform has taken away the humility from many individuals. 

Success in America is also not always associated with humble people. If you are humble, you may not be able to toot your own horn. That in turn can result in less interviews for a job seeker, or less publicity for a new author.  However, there is a balance that people can learn, and that is the fine line between confidence and arrogance.

If you talk to very successful people, you may notice that the most successful people are not the most arrogant.  I have always wondered why the middle managers of success are the ones who are the most arrogant. Is it the fact that the very successful have nothing to prove since everyone knows they are already successful?

In the path to success, we all encounter many people who help us along the way, from our parents to our teachers, from the person who gives us our morning coffee to the person who operates the subway train, to the person who keeps the office clean.  They all share our path to success. It is up to us to make sure that when we get there, we acknowledge that every one of them played a role in our success.  It is up to us to avoid falling into the pit of arrogance.