Humility is the solitary empowerment for change

Anyone might think I’m against people who act entitled in relationships, especially in marriage relationships.  But it’s not so much that than a desire to see a person change and grow.

The only person who cannot or obstinately will not grow is, by definition, a narcissist.

They can never own that they were wrong for anything, hence they cannot transcend their present malevolent behaviour.  There modus operandi is to exploit people and situations for their own gain out of a warped penchant of entitlement (i.e. more acute entitlement than most) because they lack or have an absence of empathy—they do not and cannot empathise.  Importantly, narcissists feature all three E’s, because there are plenty of people who may lack or have an absence of empathy who are not narcissistic.  Equally, those who are entitled may have empathy and in that case they would not be narcissistic.  And there are those who do exploit people and situations, but if they have little entitlement and they do have empathy, the exploitation will be more like influence.

The focus on humility as the one key ingredient in the quest for change is obvious.

With humility, shame is nullified, and nothing in terms of growth stands in the way of a person who cannot be shamed.  Humble people are more gripped with godly grief for their part when they do something wrong, and godly grief always instigates prompt repentance.  Narcissistic people are paralysed by shame so they cannot face the fact they could be wrong or could have done wrong.  The humble are grateful to be learning.

With humility, actually moving through change presents less barriers because each day is taken a day at a time.  With humility, a person neither thinks of themselves as better than they are or worse than they are, they have a grounded view of themselves and their challenges.  With humility, a person is less daunted by what lay ahead.

With humility, a person views themselves more objectively as a person capable of both success and failure, and if it’s failure, a humble person can and will apologise sincerely.  They will be “cut to the heart” for their wrong and will actively seek to reconcile with those they’ve transgressed.  The humble person isn’t motivated out of guilt or self-preservation to do this.  They do it because it’s the right thing to do.

Humility is the solitary empowerment for change because it’s all you need.  Everything else anyone would need to embark on and follow through with a change campaign is nested within humility.

Within the character trait of humility is every other virtue, and it’s truly the virtues that take us everywhere in life.

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Humility is elusive.  The main reason for this is there are so many activators of entitlement, there are so many opportunities to exploit, and empathy needs to be continually nurtured.

Once a human being is given power, and quite a lot of power or ultimate power in a setting, and they keep that power for a long length of time, AND there is very little accountability, i.e., they really do not have to account for their decisions, that situation is toxic for that human, and they will almost certainly become corrupted by that power.  This is called Hubris Syndrome.