It'S Better To Be Humble To Myself And Others Rather Than To Gloat

To be humble is to subdue our ego so that things are no longer all focused on us, whereas to be modest it to protect the ego of others so that they do not feel uncomfortable, threatened or small, and attack us in turn. One of the most important moral values that I keep whole to this day is that it's better to be humble to myself and others rather than to gloat. This because having humility shapes me into becoming the man I am today but also giving me a reflection on who I was before and how I can improve myself to become better.

The virtue of humility keeps a person firm on the ground and makes them aware of their future goals that are pending. As individuals, we always have goals that we want to achieve as it is our purpose to complete them. Many people have the misconception that humility and modesty can induce negative impacts on a person's confidence level. For example, when I was in high school years ago, I wanted to become the top student in my grade so that I can receive the recognition from my friends and peers as they know I have been a hard worker since day one. As graduation season finally approached not only I didn't receive the title of Valedictorian but also got rejected from my dream school. Although I was accepted to well-known universities, the burden of knowing that I was rejected from my goal of getting in to the college I wanted didn't feel pleasant enough to handle. Instead, I gloated to everyone that since I was able to get into these top colleges, I can just go through community college and don't even need to work hard as I can already see myself being successful. Consequently, this led me into the wrong turn meaning that I wasn't being humble to myself or others at all. I kept my insecurities attached to me and I kept people who aren't smarter than me beneath me because I wanted to see myself on top.

Gloating about being successful led me into a dark path in my life. As when time went on, I have damaged friendships, relationships, and the trust of my loved ones all in the span of one year due to becoming someone that I was not. This meant that I turned down people that were "not worthy" of my status of being the best student at the campus and in return received shallow attitudes and remarks from them. A personal experience was several years ago when I was in high school in my Junior year, I was a very anti-social person at the time because Junior year is the year where colleges expect students to become well rounded in all of their classes. In my case, this gave me intense anxiety and worry because I fear that I would become a failure and that my goal of becoming Valedictorian is coming to an end. With my fear, I destroyed one of my closest friendships for over four years in just in a matter of several days due to gloating and anger. I said to him that he won't become successful in life because even though he tries his best, he would be a failure in my eyes. The reason I said this is because I kept my pride intact as in truth, he was doing amazingly in all of his classes because he kept his focus and mindset in balance while I was drowning in homework and planning. After that, we both cut ties to one another and I never heard from him since. Every day I regret my mistake of becoming a despicable human being because once I corrected myself from my mistakes, I realize that whenever I feel avalanched from all this stress, I just lost a connection to someone who has been by my side. The way this experience shaped my moral thinking is that I have to think about the actions of what I am doing even though I'm in a situation where there is no escape because without keeping my composure of being humble, I wouldn't have lost an irreplaceable friendship that I could had rely on when I needed help the most.

Once I graduated from high school and moved onto community college as the next step of my life, I experienced the emotions and feelings of gloating about my first semester being a success towards others. The sad thing about it is that it was only a summer session during the 2016 year with only two classes being Intermediate Algebra and Freshman English. Before I suffered again, I found love in that class. Months have gone by during that summer and fall as I was able to bond with my significant other to the point of comfortability that we can share our goals and dreams. As a matter of fact, without her, I wouldn't have changed my major to the major I am taking now being Business Economics/Economics. By sharing our lives together for more than seven months, I was slowly returning to my roots of being insecure to dismiss her goals and that she is going to be beneath me as I am going to be better than her. That mindset will soon lead me to the greatest ache that I had ever experience in my life: heartbreak. I broke the promise to myself that I would stay humble to everyone's goals and passions and not let my pride get the best of me. In the end, I lost. I lost not only my emotional and psychological self, but also the love of my life.

The aftermath of the heartbreak impacted me greatly as I couldn't concentrate in my classes. This caused me to have a hard time during my Spring 2017 semester at Diablo Valley College. I pretended to have a wonderful time, but deep down, I'm depressed to the point of committing suicide. More than a year has passed from that heartbreak that I met people who supported me and cared about me even though my attitude towards them at the time was abysmal. There were arguments that have hurt my feelings even more however, they were supportive and truthful. Finally, I feel free from the chains of depression and loss as I became a new man. The only way to prevent another heartbreak such as this from happening in my life again is to continue to follow my belief that it's better to be humble rather than to gloat. Gloating would only lead me to the path of madness because I don't want to handle all of those emotions and nightmares again.

At this point in time, I'm about to finish my final year of community college at a different campus of Los Medanos and I feel more energetic and happy in my life than ever before. With letting go of my pride and gloating to others that I'll be better than them helped me see the truth that we are all students trying to succeed in their own way. There is no differentiation of who we are or what we are capable in our skills because we are all just human. By human, this means that we all want to see each other succeed in our goals and dreams. Because humility de-emphasizes the self, it diminishes the need for self-deception, which in turn frees us to admit and learn from our mistakes, consider and contemplate alternative possibilities, recognize the qualities and contributions of others and respecting the value of others. In sum, I learned that humility could not be more different from mere modesty. It is better live our lives as humble people than to live our lives as the ones who neglect the people around them who have supported us when we need them the most.