What does it mean to be genuinely humble?

Hi guys, Ighodalo Odianume here again.

One of the perspectives I have about humility is the ability to admit one’s lack of knowledge on a subject matter, especially when it’s socially presumable you should.

When you’re younger, it’s pardonable to be less knowledgeable, but with time, wisdom’s expected. So at the risk of not knowing, it’s easier to mask our ignorance, face front and move on.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines humility as freedom from pride and arrogance. In terms of learning, it’s one of the prerequisites to gaining leaps and bounds of knowledge.

One of the things I currently struggle with is interaction with the opposite sex, especially attractive women, or ladies with an extrovertive tendency. Casually walking up to strike a conversation is a skill that has eluded me for quite some time. While I’m surrounded by people that excel at this trait, admitting to someone else I suck at talking to girls is knowledge I’d rather keep to myself. Typing it out loud has me quivering about where I’d be posting this and who I’d be inviting to read drafts of this before it’s published.

I’ve realized over time that I’ve gotten better at making female friends, but there’s still that barrier, a limit to the levity I can take. I recall Yettie-Bans once referring to it as me tiptoeing around eggshells with some of our conversations. There are times I’ve felt like conversations have been patterned around the perception I feel I should have, not the actual thoughts I do have.

While my example might be trivial, this happens a lot in workspaces where employees have made assumptions about their professional proficiencies on their CVs( Who hasn’t written ‘works tremendously well under pressure, can multitask’ with the efficiency of Thano’s infinity gauntlet) only to be faced with a task that requires it and come up short.

One of my favorite stories from the Bible is Peter’s courage in walking on water toward Jesus. As amazing as Peter’s faith and courage were, it’s the stark contrast in his cry for help when said faith failed him that caught my attention.

I remember when my Late Grand Father, Augustine A. A Eyenike told me this story as a young child. He always painted the picture of Christ reaching for Peter in the depths regardless of how far down he could have gone.

Admitting we need help is hard. But we have so much help and resources from people around us; on the internet, and in books.

The first step to allowing ourselves to seek that knowledge is admitting that we don’t have it in the first place.

One of the reasons we have the institution of schools as a center of education has always been the fact that individuals could discuss the words being read in books and share opinions. It’s another reason we have workspaces as well because as a people we’ve grown by crowd-sourcing information.

If this principle has worked for us in the past, why is it sometimes difficult to ask for help when we need it?

For me, it’s the thought that this individual has better things to do with their time than helping me figure things out. Why would a real estate mogul want to sit down and go over concepts with someone who doesn’t have a quarter of a plot to his name?

In the early days of social media, I recall I used to reach out to people I admired and be crushed by not getting a response. Even these days, I can overthink not getting a response by sending out a message that’s probably taken me a bit of time to formulate. It’s the same thing that happened with me sharing an art piece I was working on. After four days and a lot of hours, it hurt only to be greeted by six likes and many skips.

The truth is there are justifications to actions and our minds go into creating crazy implications to protect itself from patterns of assumed hurt. No one enjoys being embarrassed but we find that it doesn’t feel as bad as we thought it would when we don’t spend all day thinking about it from all the different angles.

I don’t need to drag this out longer than it should be. My prime message is that you permit yourself to admit “ I don’t know this thing as much as I thought I did”. This gives your mind the will to seek out ways to fill the gaps in knowledge you’d discover you do have.

I hope reading this helps you put aside the pride that stands in the way of learning.

All right guys till I get the pleasure of having your attention for a moment, it’s bye for now. See you in the next one. Special thanks to Thelma Nwosu for helping me as an editor on this piece, words aren’t enough to express how thankful I am that you take out time to do this. You’re appreciated.