Humility

“Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.”  Madeleine L’Engle

The “throwing oneself away” here is startling, but on reflection, it occurs to me that L’Engle has it right.  There is this seemingly innate, or perhaps learned, tendency to focus on me/myself, and I.  Merely considering others’ interests along with mine is not “throwing oneself away,” and there is a seemingly high risk that in doing so my interests (knowingly or unknowingly) bubble to the top of the food chain.  (It is easy to convince myself that others want or like the same things I want or like – I mean, why wouldn’t they!)

So in that sense, humility does require “throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.”  Granted, there is that “but what about me?” voice nagging at me here, but no worries, my experience is that before long, I’ll be back to throwing others away in complete concentration on myself.