Humility…. defined in another page…. recognizing who you truly are.
This doesn’t mean knowing what you want to be doing – if you aren’t really doing it. I want to serve community – but if I am not even involved in community – how can I think of myself highly for wanting to?
Or when I do nice things for someone else…. why am I really doing it? If you ask yourself – are your motives totally pure? selfless?
For me, I could give you countless examples from my own life of wanting to do nice things for people. I could also give you examples of nice things I have done for people. But the real question comes back to…. what was my motive?
There are times that my motive has been to retain the relationship that I desire to have. If I do this or that, then they will not question my “loyalty” to them and the relationship will remain unchanged. Is this true? Sure, on some level it is true – but what I struggle with is this…. What is my true motive?
Do I do this or that – because I want to do this or that? Or do I do these things I do for another reason. This is, I think, one of the greatest social challenges we deal with on a day-to-day basis. We call these actions different things, i.e. “business”, “maintenance”, “obligatory.” But when was the last time you actually did something with pure motives?
Think about it.