Humility was the hardest lesson I learnt during my hiatus from mainstream social media.

Folks, please allow me to utter the unspeakable.

It is onerous for a black person to be humble. My theory is that our culture and history have been too subjugated to accommodate humility.

Please allow me to explain.

Since our African ancestors were annexed, pillaged and abducted to foreign lands, a desire to prove our worth has dominated our psyche. Whenever a black person succeeds in life, wherever they are in the world, the reflex is to prove to the world that ‘I have made it!’.

Our black culture is predominantly negative. It is almost taboo to pass a compliment on to another black person. It even applies to the relationship between black parents and their children (there is a rumour that the same exists within the Asian community).

Black people relish oppressing other black people. We seem to have inherited this toxicity from the repression our ancestors experienced from other races.

Nevertheless, I do not want to play the “pity race victim” card that some of our black leaders enjoy using to manipulate “reparations” out of other hard-working races. I am simply trying to companionate.

A fine example is our black music. I dare the gentle reader to count the number of songs with lyrics synonymous with “I am big” and “I have money”. Let me leave the racial introspection there.

I am not saying I am now successful. Nay, I am simply saying that my absence from mainstream social media has given me peace of mind and clarity of thought that I feel duty-bound to share to help my fellow man.

How, then, are we to define humility?

There is a story of a Zen master who taught a young disciple about humility through a simple demonstration.

The master gave the student a cup of delicious tea to drink. The student drank and thoroughly enjoyed the tea. The master offered more tea. The student accepted.

The master then poured more tea into the student’s cup, but he did not stop even when the cup was full. The tea started spilling onto the table, and the student panicked.

He exclaimed, “Please stop, master. The cup is full!”. The master smiled and said, “Humility is keeping your cup empty”. In other words, humility means continuously emptying your past experiences, knowledge, attitudes and perceptions.

Humility means always creating room for more learning and placing yourself below others.

Being underneath is an underestimated vantage point in any battle. It gives the impression of weakness to your adversary and induces pride (which blinds and dulls the intellect) in them.

Be humble. It gives you POWER!