Humility is not a passive state

I've thought of several ways to write this, but I think to be true I need to preface my thoughts with a bit about my personal history.

When Margaret Thatcher's reign of terror finally came to an end in late 1990, I had just become able to vote. However much I rebelled against them, those preceeding eleven and a half years of egos and yuppiedom must have rubbed off on me a bit (although looking at the current state of politics I may have had a lucky escape...)

At the same time I did well at school and decided I loved the 'poetry' of mathematics. Like most young people, by my early twenties I was feeling pretty confident about myself.

Luckily I got involved in community work and quickly realised that knowledge and logic were a recipe for disaster: they were the barriers that would prevent me from properly listening to people. Of course I could have spent my time with others like me and we probably would have got on ok, but I dedicated myself to the needs of the local community, and many people had different ways of thinking and expressing themselves.

This was a challenging time for me personally. I challenged myself and I allowed myself to be challenged by others. I worked hard for no financial reward. I teetered on the edge of depression. Looking back on it I was going through a process of self-negation and re-creation, and this is inevitably painful.

What I was trying to do was to learn to listen to people, and to learn to effectively and appropriately change things. I was really actively trying to develop a personal humility that would help me to do these two things, and the idea or aim of humilty really was important to me at the time.

One of the results was my first independent charity, Hyde Park Source. We aimed to involve local people in the creative reclamation of disused space in this inner city part of Leeds. My role was to do all the shit admin jobs that no one else wanted to or could effectively do - this included storing tools and bags of cement in my cellar, pushing a wheelbarrow to work every morning, and carring my office around in a Morrison's plastic bag. This was to enable other people to come along, get practically involved, and achieve things without too much hassle.

That was eight years ago, and things have continued to develop. I'm a lot more calm and relaxed now - an important part of humility - and I think I continue to challenge myself to learn and develop. Then today someone questioned my humility.

First of all, I was fine with this question. I've see plenty of people who seem to particularly hate the faults in others that they don't like to admit in themselves, and I can see that sometimes if you think you've been working on something you can become blind to the realities that others can still see in you. I can also see that this blog could be taken as an example of my burgeoning ego, although at this stage I would still disagree with that.

Anyway, I had some interesting responses to this questioning of my humility (I wasn't attacked or questioned in a nasty way, someone just decided to underline the importance of humility to their organisation).

1. I think it's important not to confuse humility with inaction. Some people do humbly accept all the problems that come their way, but this attitude doesn't help anyone.
2. Humility is about properly, actively listening and engaging, and about taking on board what's being said or what's going on around you.
   
3. It's about sacrifice in many ways: giving time, pretending you're not too busy (or making yourself not too busy), giving food or lifts or just spontaneously going out of your way to do some small thing for someone.
   
4. It's also bound up with the way we accept gifts: something I've particularly learned from the various refugee communities that I've had the fortune to spend time with over the years. (N.B. Some official policies on this really upset the fine balance that exists here.)
5. Finally, what I said today, was that humility should involve speaking out loudly about things that are more important than you, but also being open and able able to take criticism in return. In other words to subjugate yourself to your principles but also be open to the fact that you may make mistakes while trying to do this.

So finally we have this blog. I started in ignorance, and I believe that by opening out what I have to say in this informal unedited way, I'm trying to give some free gifts to anyone who is interested, and continue my exercise in learning humility. If you think I'm wrong, I'd like to hear from you, particularly if you can convince me to think again...