Humility humbles me.

AA talks a lot about humility. Humble yourself before your Higher Power. Gain humility in your dealings with others. Remove your selfishness and self-centered pride. But what does humility really mean? I don't know if I have any, since I don't think I understand the concept very well. Maybe you have this problem, too. I suppose like any good alcoholic, or any person, really, I'm far too concerned with myself to look outwards. So let's take a look at the word itself.

"Humility or humbleness is a quality of being courteously respectful of others. It is the opposite of aggressiveness, arrogance, boastfulness, and vanity. Rather than, "Me first," humility allows us to say, "No, you first, my friend." Humility is the quality that lets us go more than halfway to meet the needs and demands of others."

Huh. I don't know if I like that one. Let's try another.

"modest opinion or estimate of one's own importance, rank, etc."

Ah, that's more like it. A simple statement: right-sizing yourself and your problems. Each of us has a life story, and many of us have horrible things that have gone on in these stories. Much of it is what led us to drinking in the first place. But in the grand scheme of things, how important are our little lives and their petty problems? When we look outside of ourselves and count our blessings instead of losses, we can gain humility. When we ask our Higher Power for help, and even ask others for help, we gain humility.

Through the work in AA and with my therapist I'm going to start taking a good look at the problems in my life that have been preventing me from right-sizing my problems. I give too much credence to events that happened way in the past and let them rule my life. By taking a good look and then offering them to God, I'll have a better chance at living a life free of a high sense of my own struggles and gain humility.