“Humility is the mother of all virtues, courage the father, integrity the child and wisdom the grandchild.”

— Stephen R. Covey

My friend, we can undoubtedly be humble without feeling inadequate, should we have been raised in a highly healthy family system! If we are honest enough, I'd say that such a configuration is extremely rare and heartwarming when witnessed!

Our world is a conditioned, never-enough, limited personal success-driven broken one on a global scale, it seems to me... Only the level of imbalance would vary from one earth corner to another, I believe!

And with the alarming lack of self-awareness that we were so well trained to discard from early childhood because of the unhealthy parenting & educational styles whose keyword is "obedience", it should be no surprise that we function on auto-pilot from a twisted subconscious program full of limiting beliefs and coping mechanisms, some of which are much harsher than others on our mental health.

A trivial comparison for instance is that showing up in the world as an "unaware" empath (very weak emotional boundaries and fragile self-esteem) is much more painful that turning into a pathological narcissist who would never hesitate to abuse and manipulate to feed on others' emotions.

Reaching the point of desperation, though, is surely not the case of everybody, even though the devastatingly increasing number of suicide cases including those among kids speaks volumes about how high that level of inadequacy is anyway...

Coming back to humility, it was referenced in this personal essay in the other direction. In the midst of chaotic situations, being armed with humility can be our safety boat because it keeps to heart (not the mind) open to receive the light no matter the lies of the mind!