There is a priceless voiceover in the opening moments of the first season of "Eastbound and Down" in which the recently and involuntarily retired major-league pitcher Kenny Powers says with apparent conviction "I am the man with the baseball. I am the man who can throw it faster than f__k. And that is why I am better than everyone in the world." It is such a bald statement of the total absence of humility that it cannot help but get a laugh, but because it is so over-the-top, its more subtle point is often missed: it is ever so tempting to hear someone else's out-of-control ego and feel better about ourselves. We laugh, and gloat a little without realizing it, and think with a sigh of relief "thank god I'm not a jackass like THAT guy." The uncomfortable truth, if we care to acknowledge it, is that there is more of Kenny Powers in most of us than we are prepared to admit.
Ten years or so ago, I got a subtle lesson in what humility really means from my wife, whose intent at the time was not to teach it but rather to call me out for not recognizing two of pride's many avatars: the making of false idols and condescension. It went like this - in the late 1990's, there were a couple of Olympic medalists training in Dallas, out of the same boathouse as my scholastic crews at the Episcopal School of Dallas. We had a pretty good girls' quad that year, and the two Olympians had befriended the girls in the quad, along with the rest of the crew, and been supportive of their quest for speed and Stotesbury Cup/Youth Nationals hardware. They even baked cookies for the girls for the plane ride to Philly in May - a nice gesture that turned out to be the catalyst for the humility lesson when I unknowingly reacted to it in a way that subtly over-valued the gesture and prompted the following questions: 1) If Olympians want to bake cookies, why shouldn't they? 2) If Olympians bake cookies, are they necessarily more valuable cookies than those baked by people who are not Olympians (the correct answers, by the way, are 1) Yes, if Olympians want to bake cookies, they should by all means do so and 2) No, they're not any more valuable for having been baked by Olympians. We'll return to that in a moment.
My reaction was this: cookies in hand, I made a big production of telling the girls how special and important it was that their efforts had been recognized in the form of the charitable service of NOT ONE BUT TWO OLYMPIC MEDALISTS SACRIFICING THEIR FREE TIME TO BAKE COOKIES FOR THEM, prompting my wife to ask, privately and days later, "so if it had been someone who was not an Olympic medalist doing the baking, it would be less special and important?" Full disclosure: she had skin in this game too - as a practitioner in myofascial release and deep-tissue massage, she had supported the crew at ESD (and the two Olympians -particularly their hamstrings) and helped keep them healthy and injury-free throughout the year and thus had various reasons, some of them no doubt egoic, for feeling slighted that I would make such a fuss - but that's beside the point. My first reaction was both befuddled and slightly defensive: well, of course it's more special and important if Olympians baked your cookies - because - well - because they're Olympians and they didn't have to! To which the obvious response is "no one else had to, either - so explain again why it's MORE special?" Well, because they're Olympians. And not only that, but medalists too. "Uh huh. And that's relevant to enhancing the value of an unsolicited kindness how?" Well, I'm not sure, exactly, but I know it must be. Maybe because they have the baseball, and they can throw it faster than f_k, and that's why they are better than everyone else?
Everyone, it seems, wants to feel special and important. We human beings seem to spend inordinate time and energy finding reasons to feel superior to our fellow man. So much so that many of our otherwise noblest efforts end up soiled by the ulterior motive of mastering something in order to feel superior to others who have not done so. Sometimes we even spend time and energy finding reasons to feel INFERIOR to our fellow man in the misguided hope that some of their superiority will either rub off on us or perhaps be available to be experienced vicariously, or perhaps later, when we've successfully emulated them and become more special and important than we ever dared to think possible. The two Olympians devoted huge chunks of their lives to the craft of making boats go fast. My wife raised a child for nine years as a single parent, while simultaneously learning skills as a soft-tissue therapist that might be favorably compared to throwing a baseball - well, really fast. The fire chief put his life at hazard to save people and preserve property from destruction. The third grade teacher gave confidence to students by showing them they can master things that seem overwhelming to their young minds. And the reality is that they can all "throw the baseball faster than f_k," and having mastery of a skill IS special, but none of them is better than everyone else because of that, and if they bake you cookies, your gratitude should be the same toward any of them. Happy New Year 2020. Be humble. Bake cookies often. Avoid the twin extremes of condescension and the false idolatry of hero-worship. And feel free to remind me (and Ben Franklin, or Kenny Powers) of the same.
