How to be Humble

"Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."

-Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

This, in my hopefully actually humble opinion, is one the best lines in Pride and Prejudice. I promptly underlined it my third time through the novel.  

Humility, the antonym of pride, is nothing but pride in disguise if it is false. In a sense, false humility is like a backhanded compliment. One's intentions are not in correspsondence with one's words or actions. Someone wrote a backhanded compliment in my yearbook once. They said they were happy that they got to know me in a club that I stuck to because they thought I would have quit by then. That was nice.

Anyways, I think that false humility is sometime's unintentional. Self deprecating compliments, for example. When a girl complains about her frizzy hair she may just be complaining about her frizzy hair. Other times, though, she is practicing the art of fishing for compliments. Cue: a friend reassuring her that her hair is, indeed, lovely. And the world goes round once again.

Sometimes I notice false humility in the way people receive compliments. Nowadays, social cues tell us to negate "I like your dress" with words like "Oh, this old thang?". Or we feel the need to draw attention away from ourselves and to others by complimenting them back with a "I like yours, too" even if their dress is haneous. But negating or re-directing compliments isn't neccessarily humility. And accepting a compliment with a simple "Thank you" is not pride, either. 

What, then, is true humility?

I do not think that humility is having a feeling of insignificance or inferiority, as Dictionray.com describes in number 2. I think that a humble person can feel significant because they are significant. They can feel equal because they are not inferior. Humility, rather, is becoming outwardly focused. A humble person focuses on the needs of others above their own; this is not because they feel that their needs are inferior, but because they have chosen to want to become less. John the Baptist is a prime example, I think. In John 3:30 he says "He must increase, but I must decrease". 

I think that humans are prideful in nature, so when pursuing humility it can feel like you are "faking it until you make it" for awhile. We are intrinsically selfish and disinclined to think about others before ourselves. But I think that once we begin putting this into action, even when we don't feel like it, we will eventually come to be humble instead of just acting humble.