A Story on Pride, Humility, and Small-Mindedness

Are you teachable or do you let yourself get in the way?

— From Dayo, as she experiences and learns. Welcome to The Mind Palace!

Today’s story was going to be about the language of learning in the context of cooking but I woke up to self-analyze and now, we have a story on pride, humility, and small-mindedness. Here goes:

Photo by Dylann Hendricks | 딜란 on Unsplash

You see, one thing I constantly pray for is to be constantly surrounded by people who influence me to be better. The lack of a stimulating environment is what gave birth to stories like Let’s Not Talk About Love, Goddamn, but I’m past that and now have to learn humility without being defensive. The right word really is meekness.

‘Meek’ by Cambridge Dictionary

The point of being surrounded by people who influence you to be better is not just to set up your immediate environment so you are a continuously improved version of yourself but so that you have fewer blindspots in knowledge. They help you increase your strengths and they help you reduce your weaknesses. And reducing weaknesses is where it’s at.

To reduce a weakness is first to accept that you are weak (you actually do not know), second to enter the pool of insecurity and vulnerability that comes with being clueless, and third to be teachable— staying open to learning without having an ‘I should know that’ attitude or worse, becoming a stubborn, opinionated, small-minded fool.

‘Small-minded by Collins Dictionary’

Ideally, these people are more knowledgeable than you in some aspects and can call out your shit but do you learn anything from them? Better yet, do you allow yourself to learn anything from them? (Who wants friends that always agree with you anyways?)

No one knows everything so the thought that ‘I should know that’ is utterly flawed; that’s the point of a community, lad. Alas, confronting insecurities and embracing vulnerability forms part of what makes a life well-lived.

Today’s story does not contain any solutions because its aim is only to call us to some self-awareness.

• Do you have people you can learn from around you?
• Do you allow yourself to learn anything from them?
• How can you stay open to learning from them without resorting to whatever pride or mind block that leads to being small-minded?

Stay clarifying,

Dayo

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