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Don’t always be humble

I admit the headline is click-baity, but this is actually:

an apology
a PSA
a reminder to myself

1st things first: you should strive to be humble (most of the time)

Both my family and my life experiences have raised me to not bring others down, and to not feel “superior” to everyone. Even if you say or do something wise, you should remember that you know nothing. Even if you are altruistic, you shouldn’t feel like you are the “most merciful” person in the world.

You should be humble, both for the sake of others and yourself.

This doesn’t mean that you should become one of those “infallible senseis” from the movies. You can’t be that dude that is always humble and always gives wise advice (unless you’re quiet most of the time)

2nd: reward yourself for doing good

If you do something “good” (in the moral sense, skill sense, or any other way) that is unlikely to be done by an average person, you should feel proud about it! If doing something “extraordinary” (in the literal sense, not in the “OMG SUPERMAN!!1!11” sense) doesn’t make you feel better than normal, then you have low self-esteem, go to therapy or do some introspection.

Know your worth. You should allow yourself to feel “smug” and proud about things, but not at the cost of someone else. This is the next point…

3rd: don’t hurt others

This was me. I still am like that, but not as bad.

I still regret many (unnecessarily harsh) things I’ve said to people (mostly strangers, but also people I know and care about), even decades after the fact. And it’s not like I’m Hitler either, I just tend to regret even the “small things”.

All of those “incidents” happened because I “forgot the human”. It’s easy to dissociate yourself and others in written communication (both digital and physical). The human brain is optimized for “face-to-face” communication, as text came after speech (it’s the reverse for computers 🤔).

Coming back to the 3rd point, one could argue that different people get hurt in different levels by different things, and some might even like what hurts others. But the fact that we’re all human implies there are things that will “universally” hurt us emotionally. I’m not claiming to have full knowledge of those things, but most of them are pretty obvious if you weren’t born yesterday.

The fact that I wrote this blog-post doesn’t mean that I’ll immediately become a “perfectly behaved human”. I’ll still make similar mistakes in the future, even if I try to avoid them. Anyone can have a “bad day” or be “not in the mood” or run out of patience. So what really matters is how me/you react and recover from those conflicts.

Summary

In short:

Don’t bring others down
Don’t bring yourself down
Add something positive to yourself ❤️
Add something positive to the world 🌎🌍🌏

If you can’t take care of yourself, how are you expected to take care of others?

Thought-inducing questions

These are some of the questions that you and I should ask ourselves when taking some alone-time for introspection:

Can you recognize your mistakes?
Have you learned from those mistakes or have you conveniently forgotten them?
Is there anything you regret but that you shouldn’t be regretting?
Is there anything you should be regretting?
When was the last time you’ve hurt someone, and why?
No, I really mean “why?”. Look deeper in yourself…
Do you love yourself? why or why not?
Have you changed your mind about someone else or yourself?
Have you started to tolerate someone that you believed you would never tolerate? Is it a good or a bad thing?
Have you apologized when appropriate?
Have you asked forgiveness to someone who doesn’t deserve your time?

The End… ?

If you cried while reading this, I’m sorry… and congratulations!

Honestly, I didn’t cry while writing this (I’m serious!). But if I were to re-read this sometime in the future, I would probably cry while thinking about someone I haven’t met yet…