Life is a long lesson in humility

Life is a diligent and creative teacher,  it will not only continue to repeat its lessons until we learn from them but will also find ingenious ways to impart those lessons to us. Hence it is in our own interest that we are mindful of what life is trying to teach us and learn from our oversights and misadventures. 

As a School leader I often went into classrooms to give feedback to the teachers on their teaching practices and classroom management.  These observations were brief and I would be in and out of their classroom in about five to six minutes.

My feedback sometimes pushed the teachers on the defensive.

They felt that the rapid intervention was not a true indication of the actual class dynamic and their teaching. So caught up I was in the limitations imposed by my position, paucity of time and perhaps lack of humility, that I did not give much emphasis to their frame of reference. 

Times change and life often conspires with the changing time to reteach lessons it wants us to learn.  We moved to the US and I found myself on the starting line. 

As I began teaching, school leaders came into my classroom to give me feedback. I found their feedback needing the big picture thinking and rather select as they were in and out of the classroom quickly.

At first I clamped up in defence, but then realised this was a lesson in humility which perhaps I had missed the first time it was presented to me. 

Life lessons are hard and we are often not prepared for them, however, if we open ourselves to these teachings, no matter where or how they are presented to us,  we would have opened a door towards wisdom.

When I bowed down to the universe, life taught me that being humble can quieten your heart and help you find forbearance and peace in silence. It also made me internalise that humility can lighten your soul, lifting  you up to a vantage point from where you’re able to see a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above the waters are turbulent. 

Being humble means accepting your limitations and making an effort to make the world a better place without wanting to take all the credit.

Humility is central to the journey toward character formation and spiritual transformation.