In reading through C.S. Lewis’ classic, Mere Christianity, the following quote caught my eye.
“Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.”
Here, Lewis differentiates between someone who’s always talking about how they’re nobody, and someone who doesn’t think of themselves at all. Within this picture, humility is not just measured by what we think of ourselves, but by how often we think about ourselves. So even if we don’t think of ourselves as better than others, if we’re still always thinking about ourselves, then how humble are we really?
His description of the humble person being able “to enjoy life so easily” is appealing. What would it look like to be so engaged with the world around us that we could easily enjoy the people and situations we encountered, able to fully focus on them because we had were paying no attention to ourselves. It sounds like it would be a delightful way to live. At the same time, it seems like it would be a state that we wouldn’t be aware that we were in. Because when we realized how little we were thinking about yourself, at that moment, we would be.