The Fragile Pedestal
On a windy night recently, I stood out in my balcony enjoying the welcome breeze. It had rained a bit in the evening, and so the sky was clear but for a few isolated clouds. I looked down on from the balcony to the trees below, a few of them adorned with the white flowers that grew from the branches. These trees were planted a mere two years ago as small saplings and yet they had grown tall already. I sat down, retrospecting about myself from a few years back…
I used to be a very complacent person, very overconfident about my abilities, and used to undermine others’ abilities on the skills I was good at. This complacence of mine peaked about 5 years ago. It didn’t, however, take too long for this pride to break, and I fell down really badly from my platform of complacence. It has been 5 years since then and I am yet to fully recover from my fall.
I have tried to relive those few months, between my peak and my fall, many times over inside my head but I have never arrived to a very definitive answer as to what caused the fall. All I have realized is that while it takes a lot of time to build your pride, it doesn’t take long to break it. What I also realized is that arrogance or overconfidence builds this very tall but fragile pedestal for you to stand on. While it feels great to stand on this pedestal and looking down upon others, one never knows when and how it would break, sending you crashing to the ground.
This brings me to the point- Humility. You see, humility is never gained- we all are born with it- instead, it is only lost and replaced with arrogance over time. Humility and arrogance are both very natural, however, as one gains success (especially materialistic success) arrogance, unsurprisingly, becomes the more preferred trait; after all, success brings pride and there is a very thin line between being proud and being arrogant.
It is important for us to remain grounded. You see, we’re all like trees- we all start out as seeds in the Earth, growing slowly inside it. Gradually the seed emerges from the ground, keeps growing, and some years down the line the once tiny seed stands tall as a grand tree. A tree remains grounded, from the time it is sown in the soil as a seed until its lifetime comes to an end, irrespective of how giant it may get.
A tree without its roots is nothing but a big piece of wood
It’s difficult to know if one is being arrogant, while exhibiting one’s complacence. More often than not, it is when one falls down from their hollow pedestal that he/she realizes that what they were harboring was arrogance, not pride. Hence, it’s important to periodically reflect upon one’s actions and attitude from a third person perspective to realize it and work upon it.
The tree analogy gives an important insight as well- to remain grounded, it is important that we stay close to our roots. False praise bestowed upon a person does often lead to him/her becoming more arrogant. One’s family and closest friends- one’s roots- are the people that one can always count on, for being truthful with oneself.
This transition to being a much more humble person takes a lot of time- even I still retain some of my arrogance. The positive, however, is that I am aware of it and I actively try to curb it more and more with each passing day.
Being humble, whatever your stature may be, always repays you with respect and admiration and does result in lesser pain in the long run- after all, the closer you are to the ground, the lesser it hurts when you fall.
A tree always keeps itself grounded, irrespective of its size. The bigger the tree gets, the more strongly it tethers itself to the Earth.
