Believing Your Own Press - a lesson in Humility

I was in college before I knew that my family had money.  I happened to be talking to this nice Lebanese boy who was in the IU Business School and when he asked what my father did for a living ( he was a CFO at the time) his brows went up and he declared that we were wealthy. I was shocked.

It wasn't until my father's funeral that we heard the litany of football hero stories from his early adulthood.  We had no idea that he still held passing records at Logansport High School, or that he was in the Hall of Fame at University of Detroit.  We just didn't know- because he didn't talk much about it, and when someone would bring it up, he would downplay the whole thing.

I was on TV several times while in high school - even  athlete of the week once.  Never thought it was important - still don't in the grand scheme of things.

I think the most important thing I learned from my father was to never believe your own press - your own cabinet full of accolades - all those people who tell you how amazing and wonderful and irreplaceable you are.  Mostly because opinions change.  There is always a new winner of the Superbowl, the World Series, and the World Cup.  There is always a new hero on the scene.  I  love getting awards as much as the next person - especially if they are monetary - but I have found that while I may be the team hero in January, in June I might be the weakest link in the team chain.

The greatest temptation of Christ was probably not corporal, but the temptation of power - of recognition- of having everyone's allegiance and respect ( at least externally).  It is an intoxicating potion, the perception that we are something special - that we are somehow gifted and blessed above others.  And the more we hear these comments, the more likely we are to actually start believing them. We WANT to believe them.

We start saying things like: I deserve better; He isn't good enough for me; she is just not in my class of people, I would never be seen in public with him/ her or in THAT.   We start to believe our own press agent who is busy convincing the world that we are something amazing.

All of us have our gifts, and channelled into our calling, we can be amazing- but it is an aspect of us.  Michaelangelo was a great artisan, but could he make a great pot of soup?  Who knows. But the odds are he wasn't amazing at everything - so while he had a talent, and he put it to good use, he was just a guy like the rest of us.

I'll never forget a very heated argument that I had with my friend who also works for my same company.  She had encouraged me to write down all the things I did that were over and above my job description, to list out the lives I had impacted and the special projects I had worked on.  My job involves both my skill set and my calling. I am usually pretty good at it - but I am not amazing at everything.  So I refused to do this - and said it wasn't that important.  In the end, I decided to compromise and kind of make a list in order to provide rationale for my promotion ( a monetary reward will get me motivated) but it still wasn't as much as she wanted.

So the moral of the story is that we have to be humble, keep our amazingness to ourselves, and let our actions brag about who we are, rather than our words.