Bringing Back Meekness as a Virtue
Bringing Back Meekness as a Virtue - Rhoda Feng - the Atlantic
One recent morning, as I headed to my college dining hall to grab a bowl of cereal for breakfast, I slipped and crumpled into an awkward contortion of limbs on the cold linoleum floor. It was only then that I fully registered the presence of a cleaning lady with a mop and bucket standing nearby. As I straightened myself out, she hurriedly came over to me, put an arm around my shoulder and, in a sympathetic and contrite voice, asked if I was alright. I bowed my head, curtaining my inflamed cheeks with my hair, and muttered, “I’m fine.”
Carefully avoiding eye contact with anyone who might have witnessed this humiliating spectacle, I quickly filled up my bowl and made my way back to my room, where I changed into fresh pants and tried to put the incident out of my mind. And failed. Almost as if I’d entered a search term into my memory, I promptly and vividly recalled similar incidents of vulnerability past.
Such moments of humiliation, where no one is really at fault, can serve as a litmus test for meekness. The extrovert nonchalantly laughs off his faux pas, where the introvert succumbs to wave after wave of feelings of inferiority.