I was watching a TV show today. A mother is reunited with her son. He comes running into her arms and she squeezes him tightly and has a warm smile on her face. Her spirits are uplifted. She talks about doing well in the competition TV show because she will be with one of her favorite people on Earth.
I turned to my husband and asked why my relationship with my mom couldn’t have been that way. I realized that this woman had been a single parent and didn’t seem to have a significant other. I didn’t know very much about her life at all. It was so wrong of me to compare my life with my mother to her life with her son.
I think the hardest part of humility for me is that I always thought that a person had to think they were better than everyone else to be prideful and that a person had to think they were less than everyone else to be humble. I am learning that it isn’t about status; its about not comparing. It is prideful to believe that I could understand everything about another person’s life to be able to think I understand it enough to compare it to my own. I shouldn’t even be making the comparison much less deciding how their lives stands up to mine.
A humble person doesn’t believe that they are less than other people. A humble person understands that we all walk similar, but unique paths during our lifetimes. We are here to support and love each other. We aren’t here to compare and judge each other. I guess empathy and humility means that I try to understand how my brothers and sisters in Christ feel, but I never compare my life to theirs because I don’t want to even think about their lives being better or worse than mine. All of our lives are equally gifts from God and I should respect that.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
