When I was new, humility seemed both mysterious and unappealing. It seemed like groveling or admitting that the part of me that has always told me I was worthless, having a reverse Midas touch that turned anything I layed a hand on into the brown smelly stuff. I recall a time early in sobriety when I rented a hall for an important meeting and forgot to pick up the key, resulting a lot of upset people gathering in a very crowded house after waiting in the rain. I turned on the TV on Sunday morning, two days later to hear a preacher say, "If you pray for patience, God might give you a cranky neighbor. And if you pray for humility, you may be humiliated." I never have really worked out how to be humble, but I saw a sign in a couple meetings in Sydney that said, "Humility is honesty." and I do have some idea how to be an honest as I can, trying to see myself as I really am and not trying to project some other image to others. I have learned that hypocrasy is just false goodness. The truth does set me free, making my life an open book and letting others judge me or not as they choose, knowing that few would bother. Few efforts to impress succeed anyway. I doubt if anyone wins love or respect by having a big house or a fancy car. There is a definition of consumerism I like, it is "spending money we don't really have to buy things we don't really need to impress people we don't really like." I recall someone saying that one reason that the Catholic Church declares people, who for some reason alway turn out to be Catholics, to be saints long after they are dead, is that nobody could live with them if that happened while they were still alive. The same may be true of spiritual perfection, and why we settle for spiritual growth. AA is not a society of saints, just people who share a mental illness learning to live contentedly with it, "all here because we are not all there" as the saying goes. |