Humility - or the lack thereof!

Few of us are always humble in our approach to life, probably for various reasons. Speaking for myself I have now learned and achieved an inconsistent level of humility, so am always in awe of people for whom humility is natural and inherent. We rarely see them because their modesty prevents them from promoting their abilities, knowledge and success, so they become practically invisible to most; this is as natural as it is incredibly unfortunate.

One of the characteristics of the younger generations in most western societies today is the total lack of humility, the absolute - and often irrational - belief in themselves and their abilities, most often despite the complete absence of any proof of such. Legions of limited, talentless - and often brain-dead - specimens push themselves forward as gifted, uniquely capable, well-equipped and ready to lead; this would be some kind of cruel joke if it were not so monumentally stupid.

So it is with surprise and great pleasure that one encounters young, hugely talented individuals who are not full of themselves or self-promoters but quietly get on with their chosen work, leaving judgement of their working life to others. And one night last month I met just such a young man - head chef at Spondi, one of the best restaurants in Greece (if not the best) for many years and rewarded with two Michelin stars - who not only produced a stunning meal full of skill, subtlety and flavour, but was reluctant to personally accept credit and was gracious in praising his assistants. There was no artifice to this, no fakery, just an extraordinarily talented young man who was also humble, genuine, nice; sad to say, he is to a large extent an exception in any profession, walk of life, country.

If you wander down to any fashionable eatery in Athens you'll find plenty of other chefs, perfectly ordinary, in reality mere cooks, touting themselves as important but having little of the skill we witnessed yet devoting scant effort to improving within their chosen profession. Seems like perhaps today all you need to do is to proclaim yourself to be great for others to take it on board, be convinced with little evidence and support you blindly, with the multiplier effect of the social media making this an even more powerful statement. Almost overnight a nonentity with inflated self-belief becomes a feted star who believes in his own publicity or, even worse, that most dreaded of all things, a celebrity! And you and I get to see them in their droves promoting products and themselves on television, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. After that it's an easy step to become big-headed, arrogant and obnoxious, and most oblige.

Of course not everyone is like that, of course there are extremely capable but humble people active in many spheres of life, of course they are the ones I will always support, leaving the insufferables to others, sorry!

And of course the other humble ones, the ones who have so much to be modest about, tend to resemble the vast majority of us average Joes and Joannas. We should not forget that most of us have modest abilities and should be humble, but that should not stop us from admiring the extraordinary ones who, nevertheless, are also modest and humble.