Humility is best considered as an important virtue. While living in a society, we all need to practice humility, otherwise, the community soon will become a sea of conflict. From a Christian perspective, humility is a virtue that Christ both practiced and invited us to practice: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29).
There is no doubt that being humble is like a battle. We need to fight against our selfishness, which expresses itself in a thousand different ways. If we examine our conscience, right away we’ll note that in just one day, for example, we have given more importance to our own opinion than to that of others, we have organized our day thinking exclusively about our own benefit and not that of others, and we probably haven’t looked around us to see how we can help others.
All the virtues are interconnected. If we try to improve any of the virtue, the others will be enhanced automatically. It’s easier to conquer a virtue by approaching it laterally, through concrete actions and attitudes that imply applying the virtue, rather than focusing on the virtue itself. Such is the case with humility.
For example, sincerity and obedience are two very basic virtues that we can practice that help us grow in humility as well.
Sincerity
Sincerity consists in saying the whole truth, not just partial truths that are convenient for us. It’s something we need to apply in our friendships, our family, our marriage, our work life, and our relationship with God … in all aspects of our life.
Being sincere makes us transparent to others. It is a realization that we are just showing our inner to others. We won’t be carrying around secrets that we’ve been hiding from people who are important in our life, nor the lingering doubt, “Would they still like me if they really knew me?” Our friends will know what we think and how we feel, which is vital for a strong friendship. When our friendships are based on truth, they will be resilient and solid.
If we’re habitually sincere with people and have a relationship of trust, it will help us overcome our fear of being vulnerable. Fear of openness limits us to superficial relationships; sincerity leads to deep, lasting friendships.
Obedience
Obedience is the virtue of submission. we submit ourselves to our parents, our boss at work, and local authorities when obeying them.
When we obey, we recognize that someone has authority over us, and that makes us more humble. It means that we have evaluated the situation and recognized that this person is, in some aspect, above us.
Sometimes, obeying means we have to stop doing something we wanted to do and start going in a different way according to our authority or our elders.
We have to adopt a new perspective, give preference to other people, put our own plans on the back burner, and focus on other goals. Doing all of this is a way of exercising humility.
When it’s difficult to be humble and we don’t know how to begin improving, we can practice sincerity and obedience. If we work on them, even in little ways, they’ll be like two wheels that will help us progress towards our goal of humility.