01845: The Humble Path


As a Trekkie ( and I don't care about the supposed differences with "Trekkers"), it's almost automatic to quote The Undiscovered Country when thinking about the future. But of course Einstein has taught us all that time is relative. And my view of the future is different from that of my parents, different from that of a college student and even different from Tobie's. We all see the world from different perspectives and from different points in time. The "time" that I am experiencing from this seat as I blog about this is already a different point of time from where Tobie is going through a team building outing with his officemates despite the fact that we're in the same time zone. The differences may seem minuscule, but they exist.

Age doesn't automatically someone smarter or even wiser. Like work tenure, it just means that older folks have done enough to keep out of trouble - or dying. Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age - with comes with having live life. Wisdom is born out of experience and thus those who are wisest tend to have gone through more difficult situations and experiences and others.

It's easy to think that you've made it - that you know better than others based on what you have experienced thus far. But if there's one thing that I've learned in life, it's the fact that we never know as much as we think we know. There will always be someone smarter. There will always be someone who knows more. And thus the most important things that we can learn in life is honest to god humility. Not the kind of false modesty that makes one humble brag achievements on social media.

Humility make you cautious, but not necessarily paranoid. Humility keeps your grounded and gives you a better perspective of things. And best of all, just because you're humble doesn't mean you can't still win.

And everyone likes to win.

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