HUMILITY IS ROYALTY WITHOUT A CROWN

 

“On the highest throne in the world,

we still sit only on our own buttocks.”

Michel de Montaigne

 

Attentive listening has another name: Humility.

Putting it in another way, we cannot pay complete attention, unless we listen with a desire to learn… and, for that, we need to drop our guards, our defenses, our judgements. In fact, the thought, that ‘We know’ blocks us from absorbing the good lessons from others…

Often, we listen with an intention to defend our positions… We are ready with our responses even before the other person has completed his statements… We are busy judging the other person… We are busy proving our knowledge… We seem to get a strange kick in being right…

“I will not utter a word unless you look up and listen to me completely,” I said, once again, this morning, to couple of my students, “Your eyes listen better than your ears do.”

From my decades of teaching experience, I have realized this: Attentive listening stems from our desire to learn… It calls for our purest humility. Hence, when our eyes are somewhere else, our ears are useless…

“Sir, I am listening,” Aron reacted, when I reminded him, “Aron, look up… and listen.”

“No, I want you to listen through your eyes,” I insisted.

He did, slowly realizing the significance of my words…

At the end of the lecture, I asked everyone to take out their textbooks. I wanted to point out some important things related to the homework I wanted to give. All took out their textbooks, except Kabhir.

“Kabhir, have you not brought your textbook?” I asked.

“Sir, I have it in my bag; but, go ahead, I will note down what you are saying,” Kabhir replied.

“No, I need your textbook out,” I insisted…

“Sir, it’s inside my bag; you please tell whatever needed; I will note down,” Kabhir tried to blunt me…

“Do you have the textbook in your bag?” I asked again.

“Yes, Sir,” Kabhir emphasized.

“Then, please take it out, my boy,” I stuck to my instruction…

Finally, Kahir did, reluctantly…

Kabhir comes from an educated family, goes to one of the top colleges in Mumbai. He has been telling me about his plans to pursue Law after his Class X11. So, I thought of telling him and the class something relevant to his dream…

“Has anyone attended a court hearing? – any court, district or High Court?” I asked…

No one had…

“What about a police station?” I asked.

Two hands went up… Well, they, apparently, had visited in relation to their passport or similar routine matters…

“Even the hawaldar throws his weight inside a police station… You learn to behave well before him,” I pointed.

Then, I told them about an incident I had witnessed years ago while I was inside one of the Bombay High Court rooms. A high-ranking police officer was in the witness box. Suddenly, the phone in the his pocket began to ring, sending a rude shockwave in that packed courtroom… The Lady Judge blasted at the High-ranking police officer: “This is what your uniform teaches you?”

I described to Kabhir and his classmates how pale the face of a tough police officer could turn before a Judge. I said to him, “You need to regularly visit courtrooms just to witness what humility and patience are… That’s the best internship.”

By now, Kabhir’s textbook had come out of his bag… Aron’s and everyone else’s heads were up over their necks…   Looking at them, I remembered what Spencer W. Kimball had said:

“Humility is royalty without a crown.”

Of what use is that 100 out of 100 on your mark-sheet when your heart flunks?

Humility is the only thing no devil can imitate… Well, did I borrow it from great John Wesley?

 

GERALD D’CUNHA

 

Pic’s: Pixabay

Video: YRF