Humility
Humility
”To be humble is not to make comparisons.” In response to modem narcissism’s extolling of “Me First” and “Number One,” humility does not necessarily suggest an attitude of “Me Last’ (although that would provide a more appropriate starting-point for spirituality). What humility does counsel is that such comparisons are dangerous and foolish; the problem with both “first” and “last” as goals is that both are extremes. As A.A. co-founder Bill W. advised literally thousands of alcoholics: “Our problem is that we try, even demand, to be ‘all-or-nothing.’ “. Human Being is to be neither all nor nothing.
Within Alcoholics Anonymous the term used to signify the opposite of humility is grandiosity, and A.A. meetings glitter with stories, humorous perhaps, only to those who can identify with them-illustrating the pitfalls of high-flown pomposity.
There I was, the brilliant market analyst who was going to make a million bucks by the age of thirty, only I didn’t have the time to put my scheme into practice, because I was lying on the bathroom floor in my own drunken vomit.
With my background, and schooling, and connections, not to mention my brilliant diplomatic skills, I knew that I was destined to be the greatest statesman of the twentieth century but as time went on, all that I seemed capable of doing was sitting in my darkened living room and reaching out, time and time again, for the bottle.
I knew, without any doubt whatsoever, that I was God’s greatest gift to women, this age’s greatest lover, if only I could remove my arms from their embrace around the toilet bowl.