Self-criticism and real humility

  • It is not the self-critical one who reveals his humil­ity (for does not every­one have some­how to put up with him­self?) Rather, it is the man who con­tin­ues to love the per­son who has crit­i­cized him.

    ST. JOHN OF CLIMACUS

    Van­ity is such a hall­mark of the world’s cul­ture that it’s hard some­times to real­ize that the ten­dency to despise your­self is really no bet­ter. I don’t want to say how much time I’ve spent going to both extremes, because it would give the impres­sion that I’m far past such things now. I’m not at all — I oscil­late between them all the time.

    So I put up this quote to remind myself of its truth, and if it helps oth­ers, so much the bet­ter. We have Ortho­dox writ­ings and Bib­li­cal writ­ings that talk in very clear terms about the prob­lem with con­ceit and self-centeredness. The prob­lem for us is that the oppo­site of that is not self-hatred and self-flagellation. Those are actu­ally, in a sense, too easy (as any emo­tion pushed to an extreme is eas­ier than being mod­er­ate), they allow us both to iso­late our­selves from truly con­struc­tive crit­i­cism from with­out and a healthy skep­ti­cism of our own lack of objec­tiv­ity from within. They also cre­ate the impres­sion that no crit­i­cism from any out­sider could pos­si­bly be any harsher, when in real­ity those who loathe them­selves aren’t really being hard on them­selves at all.

    In that way, I love this one exchange from the movie “The Odd Cou­ple”:

    Felix: I hate me. Boy, do I hate me.
    Oscar: Aah, you don’t hate you. You love you. You think no one else has prob­lems like you.
    Felix: I thought you were my friend.
    Oscar: I am. That’s why I can talk to you this way. I love you almost as much as you do.

    So there’s a lit­tle per­spec­tive from Neil Simon to round things out (The scene is HERE at 6:20–6:40 for those who want to see it). And if you can think of any­one else who’s tying together Neil Simon and St. John of Cli­ma­cus, I’d like to hear about it. But, y’know, not in a crit­i­cal way.

     

    Photo: Adapted from 123RF Stock Photos

     


    Related posts:

    1. Wired’s newest dis­cov­ery: an atom of humility
    2. Keep­ing in real in ’10
    3. God doesn’t desire sorrow
    4. Shak­ing off Obliv­ion, rejoin­ing the real world
    5. One Mus­lim woman’s criticism

    May 10th, 2011 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • eliz­a­beth 05.10.2011

    I will be read­ing more of St. John C. soon and am really excited to do so! … thanks for the post!

  • Gretchen­Joanna

    Well said!
    If I am hum­ble, I won’t be sur­prised that I am wor­thy of being crit­i­cized, and I won’t have the pride that is so wounded by not being a saint. Ah, pride! My con­stant companion.

  • s-p

    Very good. False humil­ity and self-deprecation are worse than true arro­gance and pride.

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