Modesty, a necessary ingredient of inner peace

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"Modesty is the virtue of those who have no other virtues." No matter how many times you've heard this saying, it's important not to believe it. Modesty, in itself, is a great virtue, which is difficult to achieve, but it can help you a lot.

During the twentieth century, an obsession with rankings, competitions and winning emerged. In individualistic societies, as almost all of us live in now, it was important to emphasize differences, to be special, better than imaginary competitors, not to be a "loser". Unfortunately, psychology contributed a lot to this, because of the hope that tests, which determine numerical results and can show who solves them better and who worse, could bring it an identity as an independent empirical science. Today, everything is athletics, there are prizes even for artistic creativity, and every day rankings are published for everything and anything, so that the end of everything is always, of course, the counting of money.

The problem is that when you look at the inner or social life, certain personal differences become a meaningless topic. Yes, someone is faster, someone passes certain tests or has more energy in the evening than in the morning. Our knowledge of it can tell us a great deal about the property we have focused on, without at the same time telling us anything about any particular person in the world.

The point, of course, is that each person is a unique combination of the same properties, and uniquenesses cannot be compared and ranked. From this, however, it clearly follows that no one is better than anyone else as a person, i.e. that they are always better in some details and worse in others.

Unfortunately, this is all just an objective reflection on the phenomenon. Feelings about him are different for all of us and often very intense. Children first learn to perceive differences, and only then similarities, and it seems that not comparing is a practically impossible task. And when we compare ourselves, we constantly observe whether we are better or worse than others, and then we build large parts of our self-image on that.

These processes start extremely early. It is important for children to be precious to someone, because otherwise they would be too scared, so they try to connect, caress, imitate. Being loved, at such an early age, can easily be the same as being precious to someone, having the certainty that I will not be abandoned. And there you see the beginnings of that double process in which problems with experiencing self-worth and modesty always go together with the fear of rejection.

It is never more pronounced than in adolescence, when the question of whether I am accepted and popular ("am I cool") fluctuates as strongly as fears of losing society or a boyfriend/girlfriend. Such are the amplitudes of this process at that age, that it is difficult for me to imagine a truly modest adolescent, someone who does not take an extreme position or suddenly "jumps" from one extreme to another.

Fluctuations in self-esteem can remain extremely large well into adulthood, so some people alternately feel that they have great social power and that they are worthless and irrelevant to others. If you can see this closely, it becomes clear to you that all the emphasis, the struggle for popularity and self-aggrandizement are mere defensive maneuvers, exaggerations to ward off the fear of rejection. These mechanisms, however, can never be effective, so this position is often terribly exhausting.

WHAT ARE YOU PROUD OF?

Some people seem like you should remind them that a person should only be proud of personal achievements. The fact that you are born with a certain eye color is just a coincidence for which you are in no way responsible, and the same thing with some more psychological properties. Only when you have made a serious effort and made a noticeable contribution can you be proud of something. If you were born in Serbia and shout at the referee during a basketball match, that - as irresistible as it may be - does not make any logical sense, nor does, say, the Greeks beating their chests that they gave Europe civilization and at the same time refusing to talk about ancient culture. what he read

When I mention different societies, it seems that there are cultural differences, that people in Far East Asia or Scandinavia are more modest than in the USA or Southern Europe. However, the longer I live in the north, the more it seems to me that this good and systematic upbringing does not allow the open expression of true views, which easily lead to arrogance.

TROUBLE WITH MODESTY

We also know that modesty was seen as a virtue by the fact that false modesty is attributed to some people, at least sometimes. They feel pride and/or the desire to boast, but deny it, because they expect that modesty, even feigned, will bring them a greater inner reward than other people's compliments can. Behind this, however, there can be quite an imbalance, and even problems with self-esteem.

It's even worse with people who can't take a compliment at all. If you tell them that they have done something well, they immediately dismiss it, diminish its value, transfer the credit to someone else. You get the impression that the praise has not even touched them, that it leaves no impression on them. But such a thing is impossible, except in the case of specific types of mental disorders, since the outside world always somehow echoes inside us. Rejecting any praise only means that the inner balance is so fragile, the sensitivity is so high, that even small things can upset it, that the person is defending himself from pride that he could not control. Shyness here is just another face of arrogance, it is not yet modesty.

AWARENESS OF VIRTUES AND Flaws

True modesty would have to include various elements of internal and social functioning. Let me start by saying that it is important that a person has had a good measure of success and disappointment since childhood, that he can avenge stability but not omnipotence. In social games or sports, adults did not give in too much, nor did they enjoy victories over unequal opponents; at school there were both successes and failures, you know that you are neither stupid nor Einstein; you have good company and people mostly laugh at your jokes, but not all sympathy and infatuation are reciprocated. Wherever the experiences were of only one kind, it can easily happen that someone "falls out of joint" on this issue throughout his life.

The second is the capacity to not only receive praise, but also to transform it within ourselves into something valuable and long-term. Unfortunately, compliments can lead to fear, panic, shame, doubt, worry... Only in the ideal case does a stable and realistic self-esteem arise. And to make matters worse, I doubt that anyone can tell you exactly how that process takes place. But, where it is at least partially calm inside, positive feedback only strengthens that calm a little, and where it is restless, there is no way to predict the reaction. If, on the other hand, that peace is disturbed, the person can usually remember it and from that get encouragement that he will be able to regain security.

It is important to be aware of our qualities, but with that must go the awareness that all people have some qualities, and that we, in addition to virtues, also have countless flaws. When you put them in that context, neither the flaws nor the virtues can cloud your mind. If necessary, remind yourself that the world champions in one discipline are certainly much worse than you in a hundred others and they would surely envy you something as much as you envy them. The funniest example could be the story that Pavarotti, allegedly, even at the peak of his career (and when he was in shape, he was the best in the world), suffered because he didn't succeed in becoming a goalkeeper but had to sing.

Modesty, then, is not much more than realistic and stable self-esteem. We know ourselves well enough to be aware of our strengths and our limitations; the opinion of others is not decisive, whether positive or negative, since the person already knows who he is to a considerable extent; in a large number of social situations, insecurity and envy do not arise, and selfless support for other people's development is a joy. Besides, this kind of self-image is not fleeting and will not easily disappear under the pressure of connection. The same applies to the fear of abandonment, which always exists in everyone, but for these people it does not turn into panic.

FATAL LOSS OF MODERATION

Nowadays, however, modesty is a rare virtue and constantly exposed to great temptations. Television and mindless advertising, and then social networks - which some write serve to make others envy you with staged displays of your life - have led to the fact that we are all constantly bragging, without even paying attention to it anymore. The nature and number of immoderate expressions in describing oneself, one's conditions and the world (among which some are not at all in the spirit of the Serbian language, such as too happy, too sad, too good and the like) point to this inflation and loss of moderation, which make it not all that difficult just to be modest reach, but to remember it at all. We are all malleable enough that, upon continuous exposure to other people's immodesty, we begin to behave that way ourselves.

This is especially present in the lives of members of the generation we call digital native. Ungrounded in the basic asset of Western civilization - reading books - and constantly exposed to people who fight for their "like" or their money, they grow up unaware that different approaches to life exist at all, so it's all about competition and self-promotion. The opposite of modesty.

The problem with this could be more than meets the eye. The reason for this becomes obvious as soon as you delve into this story: even when you have everything else, without modesty there can be no inner peace. And where there is no inner peace, everything else is in vain.

The author is a psychologist