Humility in Everyday Life - Part Three

Humility in Everyday Life – Part Three

Who can afford an expensive bottle of wine with a price tag that potentially feeds a family for a week in another zip code?  Who can afford orchestra seats at a Broadway show?  Who sits in box seats, protected from the natural elements with wait service for food and drinks, at professional sporting events?  Who resides in public school districts with neighborhood schools that rival any qualitative private school elsewhere?  Is examining personal work ethic, ambitions and determination the only means of justifiably answering these questions?  Are there not systemic origins and causes that explain the vast inequity as it relates to the society’s distributions of resources?  Leaders have a responsibility to govern beyond the theories of text books and pervasive myths regarding the “American dream” and the alleged failure of millions of citizens to pursue it.  Humility reminds leader and celebrities of the incontrovertible fact that they could just as easily be the mother in the aisle of a grocery store telling her child that the family cannot afford an inexpensive trinket because they can barely buy basic necessities of life – food, clothing, shelter, utilities, transportation, healthcare, medicine and education.

In addition to taking out the trash and seeing an underground economy in which recycling may feed families and shopping for groceries with the visual and experiential lesson of the oceanic expanse of income in the United States, the mentors suggests his student always pick up his own dry cleaning.  Poor people rarely go to the dry cleaners.  As a normal practice to avoid this expense which equates with a luxury for them, working class citizens buy clothing that does not require dry cleaning.  Going to the dry cleaners pungently reminds a person of his commonality with average people.  Dirty rings solidify around the collars of even the most expensive shirts.  As everyone sweats, body odor fills the lobby despite the cleaning chemicals or customers’ cologne and perfume.  Regardless of a person's job or social and economic strata, he wants the workers to care especially for his clothes.  

When standing in line, you observe the complexity of many people's lives.  Some workers only use the dry cleaners because their companies reimburse them for uniform upkeep.  Some people have an image they must maintain at all cost. These types of people will bear the expense of dry cleaning their blue jeans.  Nonetheless, were a political leader or Hollywood celebrity to go to the neighbor dry cleaners, he would interact with constituents and fans on a very basic level.  It would be important for him to note who is absent.  There are times when silence and absence speak more loudly than their opposites.  Picking up dry cleaning enables us to see American classism while not a caste system as practiced elsewhere leaves room for a smidgen of social mobility.  The wise sage instructs his mentor to handle this personal chore in order that he maintains constant contact with average citizens.

Genuine humility which emerges when completing the foregoing tasks empowers a person to touch people’s lives in considerable and eloquent ways.  Watching someone doggedly dig through your neighborhood trash for the meager revenue that large plastic bags of recyclables will yield forcibly reminds you of how rudimentary life can be.  Observing the tough choices a mother makes between basic staples and diminishment in the eyes of her child in a grocery store creates a heart of compassion and gratitude as you realize your blessings and privilege.  

Albeit punctuated with trendy designer labels and purchased at flagship department stores, taking your sweaty, musty and wrinkled clothing to the dry cleaners puts you in contact with a certain segment of people.  Mostly, you see middle class professionals whose jobs require they maintain a particular image of prosperity.  Also, you cross paths with working-class people who receive reimbursement for their uniform upkeep.  Chances are you will not see countless minimum wage earners, unemployed or underemployed persons and homeless people.  Leaders and famous people have an obligation to consider everyone as they finalize decisions affecting average people's lives. To ensure they lead with wisdom and purpose, they will need humility to motivate them to imagine how differently their lives could be were they to switch with someone whom they encounter while taking out the trash, buying groceries and picking up dry cleaning. 

Saint Thomas Aquinas simply defines humility as the truth.  Apparently, we are as free as we are honest.  "You are as sick as your secrets." Hidden character defects imprison the person who holds them.  Honesty liberates an individual to enjoy unconditional self-acceptance without the compulsion to explain, defend, excuse or justify himself.  Humility and honesty combine to allow a person to extend the same freedom of self expression to everyone else.  A saying, "Live and Let Live" succinctly captures this dimension of humility.  Life's daily complexity reasonably means everyone suffers from some type of myopia as it relates to knowing and living "Truth." Accordingly, we offer the benefit of the doubt to our fellow members of the human family. Humility stipulates we allow the definitive possibility that we may be wrong as we affirm our distinct worldview arising from our prism of experience.