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Humility is difficult to define. It’s like the old joke of the man who won the Humblest Man of Year Award. As the crowd clapped and cheered, the winner held the trophy high over his head and smiled. Immediately the host snatched the trophy out of his hand. The recipient looked shocked, to which the host replied, “Well, you’re not humble any more.”

 Perhaps we’ll never be able to fully define humility, but I’ve always liked what Frederick Buechner says in his little book, Wishful Thinking:

“Humility is often confused with the gentlemanly self-deprecation of saying you’re not much of a bridge player when you know perfectly well you are. Conscious or otherwise, this kind of humility is a form of gamesmanship.

“If you really aren’t much of a bridge player, you’re apt to be rather proud of yourself for admitting it so humbly. This kind of humility is a form of low comedy.

“True humility doesn’t consist of thinking ill of yourself but of not thinking of yourself much differently from the way you’d be apt to think of anybody else. It is the capacity for being no more and no less pleased when you play your own hand well than when your opponents do.”