Humility is about being right sized. A lot of folks take this idea of humility as needing to lessen oneself for the sake of being “humble” when really we should be representing ourselves clearly and as objectively as possible.
Yeh but then, if a person is genuinely obviously extremely attractive, or clearly has traits like a capacity to lead or influence people, or is objectively wealthy, or is clearly very smart, those are all things that come off as really conceited to the rest of us unless their acknowledgement is very careful. If such a person is too quick or too ready to acknowledge these things about themselves, despite their accuracy, we’re pretty likely to think they’re a dick. It seems like for people who are in some ways exceptional, the appropriate level of humility, wherever it is on the scale, does need to involve at least a little bit of pantomime and false modesty. The right size in such cases will need to be at least a little smaller than they really are, not too much smaller, or it’s interpreted as disingenuous, but not exactly true to scale either.
Yeah I mean, I didn’t say to gloat / flaunt. You can do what I suggested without making others feel small. False modesty is exactly what we are avoiding…genuine modesty is absolutely fine to run alongside my comment about being right sized and is the perfect antitode to the concern you started your post with.
And tbh the right sized thing has less to do with looks / status / wealth and more to do with how we see ourselves when doing a self assessment of character traits.
Humility is about being right sized. A lot of folks take this idea of humility as needing to lessen oneself for the sake of being “humble” when really we should be representing ourselves clearly and as objectively as possible.
Yeh but then, if a person is genuinely obviously extremely attractive, or clearly has traits like a capacity to lead or influence people, or is objectively wealthy, or is clearly very smart, those are all things that come off as really conceited to the rest of us unless their acknowledgement is very careful. If such a person is too quick or too ready to acknowledge these things about themselves, despite their accuracy, we’re pretty likely to think they’re a dick. It seems like for people who are in some ways exceptional, the appropriate level of humility, wherever it is on the scale, does need to involve at least a little bit of pantomime and false modesty. The right size in such cases will need to be at least a little smaller than they really are, not too much smaller, or it’s interpreted as disingenuous, but not exactly true to scale either.
Yeah I mean, I didn’t say to gloat / flaunt. You can do what I suggested without making others feel small. False modesty is exactly what we are avoiding…genuine modesty is absolutely fine to run alongside my comment about being right sized and is the perfect antitode to the concern you started your post with.
And tbh the right sized thing has less to do with looks / status / wealth and more to do with how we see ourselves when doing a self assessment of character traits.
That’s a wise perspective.
And it feels especially generous as a response to my nonsense. Thanks.
You’re fine, glad you got something out of it. It was told to me by someone who helped me through a pivotal time; happy to pass it on.