This has been a doozy. I read the chapter in Everyday Holiness on humility. Intellectually, I understand that humility is taking up your proper place. Intellectually, I understand that true humility means neither deifying nor denigrating yourself.
And in practicality, this truth has been tested deeply these last few weeks.
I broke up with my long term partner a few weeks ago. The urge to disappear and spare humanity from any harm I may inflict is strong.
Loving someone and losing that love is one of the most humbling experiences of my life. I have been reckoning with my place in this world.
At all times I feel both too big and too small. Too big and demanding of my community’s time and support. Too big in my feelings. Too big in my neediness. But I also felt too small. Too small to meaningfully repair that which was broken. Too small to see the greater picture of the world around me.
With my inner emotional landscape so stormy and unstable, I was both unable to see myself and unable to see beyond myself. It was like sinking in a rather large mirrored sinkhole.
What is one to do?
Bachya ibn Pekudah’s Duties of the Heart gifts us with concrete guidance.
(1) When he is intensely angry towards someone who reviled him, whether in word or deed, and he rules over his spirit, and forgives, despite that he has the ability to take revenge, and instead forgives him out of humility and lowliness – this attests to true submission.
(2) When he is struck with a severe financial loss, or some calamity occurs to one of his loved ones – if his calmness overcomes his shock, and he humbly accepts the Creator’s decree, and justifies the Divine judgment
Can I make generous assumptions of others? Yes. Can I accept that bad things happen, and make meaning out of my losses? Also yes.
As I’ve moved through my breakup, it’s been a central act of humility to recognize that my ex-partners experience is just as true and valid as mine. That there is very little “truth” to be found. We are reading the same story from different perspectives. Anger may come up. Devastation may come up, but at the end of the day, my compassion wins out.
When it comes to making meaning, I am called back to an excellent podcast of Brenè Brown’s where she interviewed David Kessler, apprentice to Elizabeth Kubler Ross. One of David’s huge contributions is that he proposes a sixth stage of grieving: finding meaning.
As I’ve navigated this break up, finding meaning in it has been a large source of comfort. I am learning that having a major break up has forced me to allow others to see my vulnerability and humility. I am a mess. Somewhat literally.
There was nothing that made me feel all of my size and space more than having a dear friend of over 20 years show up unannounced to my house with flowers and candy, and let me hold her and sob. She sat in my messy house and let me be in absolute grief.
It is only by being needy and vulnerable that I’ve seen the depths of love from those around me. It’s only by showing my soft white underbelly that I learn just how much I can trust my friends, family, and greater community to hold me.
Humility means taking a break, because you actually aren’t expected to operate at a higher level than anyone else. Humility is experiencing your full range of human emotions. Out loud. In a way that possibly inconveniences another. I read two versions of the same quote recently:
Annoyance/Inconvenience is the cost of community.
I think I am still scared of allowing my friends or family to love me when it is inconvenient to do so. I am scared of finding out how conditional that love is.
This fear has kept me from girls trips and nights out, because I am scared of people finding out how very very human I am. That I snore when I sleep or can’t keep up on the hike or get scared sometimes at night. The need to be perceived as somehow better, easier, or right-er steals the gifts of humility.
Again, this is because I struggle with the thought that people would want to love me as much as I love them. I struggle with this humility concept. Like….badly.
I tend to ride the Newton’s Cradle of “I am so great” and “I am so terrible.” The either or is exhausting. And it comes from a heavy handed insecurity. Humility is hard.
Humility is…well…humbling.
Wrangling with my humility has brought up a tremendous amount of grief, surprisingly. I have been grieving my relationship, but I am also grieving this idealized person I think I can become if only I work harder. I’ve been thinking about this poem by Merritt Malloy that I have all but memorized.
It is the poem I use when I am particularly achy for someone in my life who’s died. Typically my grandparents or a former boyfriend, Jacob, who I realized in his death was perhaps the great love of my life.
I’ve been reading this poem a lot recently, because I think humility is allowing the death of the person you think you should/could/must/ be. Ego death is often talked about in circles with psychedelics on board, but I think my Mussar practice has handed me a different type of ego death. And so, tonight I grieve my conceptual perfection. The version of me that has never and will never exist. The version that both inspired me, but also, stood in the way of authentic connection. Only by letting her die can I follow the sacred instructions issued in this poem:
”and when you need me [your perfectionism],/ put your arms around anyone/ and give them what you need to give me.”
In loving memory of the version of me that will never be, so that my authenticity may run wild in the meadows of humility and community.
Epitaph by Merrit Malloy
When I die
Give what’s left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.
And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.
I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.
Look for me
In the people I’ve known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on in your eyes
And not your mind.
You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.
Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.
And You Shall Love 