more humility

A few days ago, my friends and I decided to go Geocaching. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s basically an app that allows you to go on miniature treasure hunts. The treasure, however, is usually just a log book to sign your username, and some random trinkets. Regardless, it’s pretty fun to search for the Geocaches, and even more fun when you find them.

Between the three of us, my friends and I were able to find fourteen Geocaches in the matter of a few hours. We thought we were really good at the whole thing with numbers like that. After we got the hang of how it all worked, we found ourselves back at one of the first Geocaches we searched for, but weren’t able to find on our first try. There was another woman there searching for the same Geocache, and we decided to strike up a conversation to see where all she had looked. Turns out, this particular Geocache was no longer active, so we were basically searching around for nothing. After figuring this out, we began asking the woman where else she had gone Geocaching. She explained that she had found several of the same ones as us, and we boasted about the fact that we had found a whole fourteen of them that day. This woman raised our fourteen by a bit, and told us she had found twenty-five.

After hearing that our fourteen finds were minuscule compared to this lady’s findings, we were quickly humbled. Turns out, we weren’t as amazing as we thought we were. While our findings were alright, and something to be proud about, I maybe shouldn’t have boasted to the woman who had found far more by herself.

We all have a habit of wanting to be recognized for our hard work, and for a feeling of appreciation from those around us. Simply put, we want to feel like we matter to those around us, and to the world. Just like my friends and I with Geocaching, we want to broadcast our good works. Humility says that we don’t have to do that though, because it is more meaningful to be quiet in volume, and loud in value. I’ve found that searching for approval almost always makes us realize that what we want is for someone else to tell us they are proud of us. However, we can only find that security and self-appreciation in ourselves.

This isn’t always easy to apply in our lives. Trust me, I struggle with humility every day. In fact, I think there was a time in my life when I had no clue what humility was. I was constantly striving for someone to tell me that what I did mattered. Turns out, the world and those around us usually can’t say enough good things about us to fulfill that hunger for acknowledgement, because humility is the only thing that will fill us. Being humble doesn’t mean we can’t be proud of what we do, but rather that we aren’t harboring the feeling that we need to let everyone know what we did in order for our work to be meaningful.

I usually find that every time I’m striving for recognition, I need to know that a few seconds of admiration is far less valuable than being content with myself and humble. We shouldn’t focus our lives on having gleaming resumes, but rather how we can continue to add value while having humility in our hearts.

I hope that every day, I strive to be quieter in the words I speak, and more impactful in the value I add.

There’s more to humility.

There’s more to it all.