If You Want To Be Happy, Learn To Be Humble

The wall between arrogance and acceptance is called humility.

Let’s face it, if you get to be my age and you haven’t heard it all before, you just haven’t been paying attention.

I read all the headlines when I started on Medium. How to be yourself. How to land your dream job by saying no to nightmare jobs. Let go and let your makeover snag that guy.

I said to myself, self? Are you kidding me? This is what’s getting people into the $10k a month club? Writing the obvious? Telling stories of how they broke through their pain? Been there, done that. Please. I don’t have much time left. Tell me something I don’t know.

Oh, yeah. I was that Little Old Pain-in-the-Ass, thinking she knew it all. And I did. In a manner of speaking. I’ve been a striver and seeker all my life. I’ve read all the important books. I’ve had the major insights that open the doors to Nirvana as they say.

I’m a life coach. I’ve spent years in the trenches comforting people with AIDS, and the shattered friends and family they left behind. You think you’re going to tell me about life? I hate to admit it, but yes, a part of me was saying that as I read pieces that left little on the table when it came to describing surviving abuse and neglect as a kid or a devastating marriage.

So for a while, I skimmed over those articles. Not because I didn’t have compassion or understanding for the writers. But I was looking for someone writing from my perspective. I’ve put in my 10,000 hours in therapy, self-help groups, reading the BOOKS.

I paid my dues. What’s next for me?

I even thought Medium wasn’t a place for me, a woman heading into the great unknown. It’s for young people still finding their way. They’re decades away from where I am, at that bewildering age, old enough to have learned my lessons but young enough to still need a challenge. Wondering if the juice was gone from life, because, after all, I’d reached a point where I knew it all.

And of course, that’s the perfect mindset for life to come along and slap you upside the head, which seems to be the dance move I need periodically.

I don’t know about you, but my life has come with a built-in mirror. Every once in awhile, I run smack into it and get a good look at myself. Usually, about the time I won’t like what I see.

I began to think of many potential headlines, articles I could write about the lessons I’ve learned. Articles I believed might help some of you struggling young people (young, as in anyone a few months younger than I am).

How I bluffed my way into jobs; messed up motherhood but still managed to hold onto my daughter’s love; let go of imposter syndrome back when we called it feeling like a fraud. Yeah, I’ve done all those things. You will have too when you’re my age.

But these popular topics weren’t speaking to my stage of life: I’m not job hunting; motherhood is in the bank; I’ve been ripped apart by publishers and rejection hasn’t killed me yet. I need some inspiration, I thought, why not? You have time on your hands. Don’t just read the clickbaity headlines. Dive in and see what these writers have to say, these generations you seem to feel so superior to, or at least so very older than. So with an eye roll, I started reading the articles.

And, no, I didn’t have any revelations about overcoming abusive bosses or hacking my way to a million dollars. But don’t worry, I found something better: my next challenge.

When I turned 80 I wrote that my goal before I died was to let go of judgments. Honestly, if I’d started that task on the day I was born, I’d still be working on it. I’m getting better, actually, but that’s not the only item on my to-do list.

I had an insight the a few decades ago. Life is about learning humility. And yes, that bit of wisdom is easier to see in the distance than up close. It’s a lesson best learned early, because every time we think we’re on top of the mountain, something comes along to slap us down. Arrogance assures a hard landing.

I finally got it that life is easier when we put a slice of humble pie on our plate, instead of having the cosmos force it down our throats. Of course, humility isn’t always the flavor of the month.

As I continued reading the personal stories and articles containing the writers’ truths, like those baseball players getting a pie in the face, I got hit with a dose of humility. It knocked me off my perch where I had placed myself, believing, as I’d begin a piece, that already knew where the writer would end up. After all, I’d been around the block a time or two. What could this young whippersnapper teach me about anything?

And then, as though some gremlin in my consciousness heard the question, it barked back, “Would you listen to yourself?”

I sat back in my chair, as you do when you’ve been punched in the gut. “You think because you have a big number on your driver’s license that you’re automatically imbued with all the wisdom and knowledge in the universe?”

Another gremlin mumbled, “Well, it feels that way,” but it got slapped down, too.

But I got what my best self was saying. Arrogance is a wily trait. I can talk a big story about giving up pettiness and judgy judging (Thank you Laura Dern in Big Little Lies). And I’m sincere about going out in a blaze of acceptance.

But if I’m going to accomplish that goal, I have to take a step back. Because there’s a big wall to climb before you can get from the garden variety know-it-all insufferable we can all be at times. (Okay, well you’re good, maybe I’m just talking about me.) And that wall is called humility.

Because if you can’t take yourself down a peg, you’re going to keep taking others down a peg, which is what I was doing skimming some Medium headlines and listening to those buffed and powdered anchors on the news spouting words of wisdom I’d thought of before they were born.

And how do you achieve this lofty virtue? It’s easy. You start by just listening. Something I learned when I was a volunteer for people with AIDS. I’d had it drummed into me that I would be meeting people who had a short window left to live. And what they needed most was to speak their last words and have someone hear them. Not tell them everything would be okay or some other platitude that made the listener feel better but insulted the patient, but just sit there and take it all in.

Let them speak of their fear, their anger, their disappointment at being dealt such an injustice. They didn’t need my opinion on anything; they just needed my presence. And so for five years, I had the most powerful, intimate, life-affirming connections with people on the verge of death. It turned my head around, my life around. Did it make me humble? Oh, you bet your thousand-clap article it did.

So what’s the trick behind this life hack? The secret to this special kind of listening? Well, lean in close, because I’m going to tell you. Here’s what you do. When somebody’s talking, you sit back and basically, just shut the fuck up.

That’s what I’d forgotten to do. I’d started to fall in love with my experience, with how much I had learned as the payoff for my heartaches and losses, my successes and gains. And I thought I’d reached the top of the mountain. I was 80 fucking years old for Pete’s sake. What do any of these writers have to teach me when I’ve heard it all before? When I’ve been there, done that?

Fortunately, a part of me took those snarky questions seriously. Because suddenly I saw the answer in front of me, standing out in sharp relief. Get back to basics, Helen. Shut the fuck up and listen to other people for a change.

So I did, by reading more deeply. Yes, I’d had many of the experiences my colleagues on Medium write about. But that wasn’t the point. By checking off the titles and saying I don’t need to read that again, I’d forgotten about listening. About what happens when you just sit quietly and listen to another’s truth.

You acknowledge who they are, what happened to them, what they think about the world. But they also take you on a journey inside yourself. By just listening, absorbing that person into your own inner chambers, they open up doors you might be keeping closed. Through their story, you recall your own similar experiences, your feelings, the people involved, the memories good and bad. You mull over thoughts and insights. As you commune with the writer or the speaker, you allow them to open up yourself to yourself. You might discover new territory, or reminders of who you are, who you want to be, where you need to go next, or tap into a well of compassion for the other, or for yourself.

It’s called connection. The meaning of happiness. But you don’t get there by thinking you know more than the other. You arrive on the winds of humility. By allowing the other to teach you, explain to you, to show you what they know, where they’ve been, where they hurt, how they dream.

One truth about life worth remembering. One I should paste on my old forehead. No matter how much we may learn about life, no matter how smart we are, we will never truly know all there is to know about the person sitting next to us. That should crumble every smart ass ego. To even begin to try to know another in all their aspects is the work of a lifetime. If you take the first step, if you shut the fuck up and just sit back and listen to them, everything else will follow.

Here is a sampling of more of my thoughts on life, love, and the challenges of being human at 80.

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