"Humility is the willingness to become undone. It’s about being available—without projecting my truth, consolidating my identity, or enforcing my projects"
Today I was touched by Pope Francis's (long-overdue) acknowledgment of the horrors of child abuse within the Catholic Church.
Now, before you spit on your screen to ventilate your disapproval of the atrocities committed by the Church, let me do this for you. If we want to have an adult conversation with any members of the Catholic Church, it seems appropriate that they begin with "a great number of heartfelt apologies and requests for contrition and forgiveness," as Christopher Hitchens aptly suggests in this clip, continuing with a long list of long-awaited apologies.
With that addressed, listening to Pope Francis reminded me of the strength and nobility found in weakness and brokenness—a cornerstone of Christian faith. It’s not about pretending to be a perfected or enlightened expression of the divine but accepting that we are simple, fallible human beings, which calls for humility if one values truthfulness and sincerity.
Perhaps the word humility makes you cringe. As I write this, I recall vivid memories of religious friends and Christian writers making what I judged to be hypocritical, self-deprecating remarks in order to attain status or social approval. For me, the word is associated with a stultifying and anti-intellectual loss of agency.
But sincere humility does not require the infantilization of the intellect. It does not seek self-deprecation, self-sacrifice, or undervaluation, nor does it aim to gain social approval. When humility includes any of these elements, it risks being harmful, stultifying, abusive, or hypocritical.
I propose this definition: humility is the willingness to become undone. It’s about being available—without projecting my truth, consolidating my identity, or enforcing my projects. It's about openness to reality as it presents itself, both externally and through internal impulses, and being willing to take this reality as my teacher. Without resistance, numbing, or avoidance—fully embracing the suffering caused by the self-imposed gap between who I think or hope I am, and who I truly am. Indeed, my claim is that most -if not all- mind-created suffering is nothing but holding on to a particular self-image. But be careful: this practice of humility is not about changing or correcting my self-image; it’s about getting rid of images and concepts altogether to have an unmediated experience of reality.
Humility is a natural outcome of embracing "not knowing." Letting go of my ideas about right and wrong, about how things ought to be, how you or I should act and speak. However, letting go of a conceptual moral code can instill fear. Without rules, are all actions equal? Does anything—rape, torture, murder—become permissible? This question reflects a confusion. I’m not engaging in a conceptual debate on ethics here; I’m proposing an embodied practice of being without conceptual interference. It's an invitation to be directly touched by my experience before I have a thought about it. To stop pretending you know what life is all about.
Humility is not a firm decision or disciplined action, nor is it a clear insight. It’s more like a melting away into innocence and vulnerability, making oneself more available. As if the world slowly seeps into my veins, humility becomes a kind of intimate, penetrating rapture—giving myself up to the truth of the moment.
Humility is self-love. It’s the full embrace of who we (think we) are—not mere acceptance, but the full monty. No attempts to change anything. Not forcing anything to happen or preventing anything from happening. Shame, guilt, self-deprecation, inner criticism, exhaustive perfectionism—all are cut at the root by the sword of this newly accepted ignorance, or should I say, innocence?
Poof. Gone. Mere constructions.
Humility invites us to make and admit mistakes. It’s the pleasure of breaking open, liberating myself from a self-imposed corset that dictates how I should feel, act, speak, move—or, quite frankly, who I am allowed to be. Ending this conceptual violence toward myself, the pressure to perform the project called "me”, is an act of self-care. It’s clearing away the need to “perform” and replacing it with joyful, non-preferential witnessing of what arises through my mind and body. A liberating surrender into simply being with what is.
Humility is essential for being different together. Only when I haven’t already made up my mind about myself, the other, or us can I fully own my experience and extend myself to simultaneously support both my own and the other’s existential development. Humility is paramount for loving another—it’s a fresh breeze, opening the way toward full self-recognition.
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(Disclaimer: much of the vocabulary of this post is inspired by Eric Baret's "Let the moon be free")
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