Humility, like love, makes one go into the depths of reality

Vanity makes us ‘vanish away’ without having achieving anything good or purposeful in life. The vain have no vein to understand the kind of life we must lead on this planet as human beings to fulfil some specific mission before we bid adieu.

I suppose some of us, ‘heavily overdosed’ with vanity, may be relieved if we read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and try to understand the total disaster that vanity can lead to. Take this from one of her main characters, “Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.”

Vanity makes you blind to all good things and the reality of life. It makes you feel that there is none who could measure up to you, and this keeps you in a world of complete ignorance. History is replete with stories of cocksure leaders who had to lick the dust because they failed to judge their own weaknesses and the strength of their enemies. No wonder we have US author Jim Butcher, in Proven Guilty, saying “Vanity, thy name is vampire.”

It is one’s ego that comes into play when one loses all humility that one is endowed with. We sing full praise of ourselves and try to show others in a bad light. And that surely comes as an invitation to disaster.

Therefore, it is important that we have to be our own critic first before we go to judge others through our tainted lens. We must learn to show humility in all circumstances. Humility, like love, enables us to go into the depths of the reality of life. And that is the only way to go in life.