Skip to main content

Faking Humility | How to Stay Really Humble?

The number quality that is a favorite among major business leaders, spiritual leaders and women looking for life partners is humility. It is a quality that arms you with overwhelming sense of strength and peace. Or it could leave you completely in shambles because it tends to open up parts of your mind that weren't so receptive to all the bullshit that goes around in the world.

It is a tricky emotion to reside in your mind. Like any other emotion, say happiness, sadness, guilt, pride or indifference it shapes your personality and defines the core of your existence.

This leaves an interesting question - whether I can fake humility?

I can fake happiness, for sure. For example, when I meet an unpleasant person but I have to act as per the societal requirements that dictate that I be pleasant to this person. I act with a smile on my face. There are other examples, when you're in a group and you've to pretend you're enjoying the pleasantries, you fake happiness. I can fake sadness, I bet. A relative died, I didn't even knew him or her. But to feel part of the wake or mourners I fake sadness. I may even shed a tear or two. 

i can fake a lot of other emotions. Marlon Brando in an interview said that we do acting all the time. In fact each and everyone of us is living in a live reel that's called our life. We're acting each and every moment. You might be ready to go for a nap but your perhaps sitting with your partner, so as to not be rude to him or her. Your boss might be the most disgusting guy, but you're staring at him right now and even smiling a bit on his pathetic jokes. We're all actors. It is sometimes hard for me to understand what's real in the other person. Whether all the moments I felt were real are in fact just etiquette and norms that have been set by human beings from preventing the truth from ever coming out!

So can I fake humility? I'm leaning towards 'No' from my own personal experience. It is hard for me to fake humility. The number reason I cannot humility is that it requires a far more patience than faking any other emotion. It requires me to genuflect myself in front of another human being. Knowing the pride and prejudice that cloaks my mind & heart it is hard for me to think that I can genuinely genuflect myself. As a human being that still suffers from emotions like pride, hate and anger I cannot be deferential unless I really want to or the other person is far far superior to me.

The number two reason is a bit more spiritual or metaphysical in nature. Humility is the basest of emotion that acts as the origin of everything good. Let's consider I'm happy, why am I happy? Well I have come to terms that the current effect of a certain action, either caused by me or someone else, is beneficial to me. So I've let go of any incentives, expectations or motives for the moment. So I'm completely true to myself, at least for the moment. Even sadness can be caused by deep sense of humility or honest with oneself. Humility tears through any sense of pride and completely reveals me to myself. It is the perfect way to hear your inner voice and realize what you're, deep inside you.

So I believe I cannot fake humility. It is just next to impossible for me to fake humility. I can fake happiness, sadness, anger or any other emotion that is doesn't draws oneself closer to one's own heart. But ask me to fake humility, sorry I just can't.

Here is the interview of Marlon Brando where he describes that each of use is acting each and every moment of our lives.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Scuba Diving 36 feet deep in Goa (Surreal but Nice!)

"Surreal but nice" that's what Hugh Grant's character managed to blurt out, mesmerized by the beauty of Julia Roberts (in the movie Notting Hill ). And this was the exact thought that was running in my mind as I was rising from a depth of over 35 feet under water in the Arabian Sea near Goa, India. I had just finished my first dive (rather second dive of my first dive) with grouper fish, tailor fish - and many more - knelt at the bottom of the ocean floor and touched a ship wreck that sunk more than sixty years ago! It was a surreal experience that has left me with a feeling of self-satisfaction as well as endless curiosity. The two feelings very rarely take a house together in my mind. Probably the last time they shacked up together was when I got an admit for my Master's from State University of New York . The feeling of gliding underwater among the fishes, water pressure trying to burst your ears drums, flying over huge boulders of rocks under sea; like an un...

How not to read History? Avoiding Sophistry, Deceitfulness, and Irrational Narratives

Introduction A few days ago I wrote on how a contemporary Dharmic mind is enslaved with various narratives meant to degrade the tradition of Dharmic spiritualism (or Hinduism) and relegate the spiritual path as non-sensical, patriarchal, and regressive (i.e. against modernity). I've three examples below that show the eagerness in contemporary conversations to push this narrative. Since free speech and vaad (Sanskrit: वाद, discussion) are two-way streets so it's well within my right to share my opinion based on sound reasoning and well-established examples. And my opinion doesn't rely on the play of words (Sanskrit: सामान्य छल, quibble)) or a mere attack on the opposition (Sanskrit: वितंडा, cavil/sophistry). Just a side note, these categorizations are based on the ancient  Nyaya philosophy composed by Akṣapāda Gautama between the 6th century BCE and the 2nd century CE. Example 1 -  वितंडा / Sophistry Buddhism and Sanatana Dharma have a long history of coexistence and assim...
The debate on Times Now Summit 2022 between Salman Khurshid, Dr. Vikram Sampath, Sai Deepak, and Pavan K Varma showed how disconnected the left, right, and the middle are from each other.  We all know these 'luminaries',  as Rahul Shivshankar, Editorial Director & Editor-in-Chief  @TimesNow introduces them.  How left and right  do not apply to Indian political viewpoints  is a matter for another time, therefore pardon my use of the western paradigm of left and right for the rest of this blog post. Times Now Debate, 2022 We all know Sai Deepak through his YouTube debate with  Asaduddin Owaisi  (Sai Deepak in fact moderated the debate) a few years back. And since then he has authored a couple of books on the historical context that surrounded the drafting of the constitution of India between 1946 to 1950. His first book on India, that is Bharat forced us to rethink colonialism and introduced an entirely distinct scholarly way to look at middle-e...