A person with genuine self-respect does not resort to self-promotion, he simply does not need it.
In one of my books, I wrote that a modest talent is like a sparkler. It doesn’t heat up or light up. Many readers, who considered modesty a great virtue, were surprised. From childhood they were taught not to stick out their abilities, not to be proud of their successes, and in any case not to emphasize their advantages over others, especially obvious advantages. Modesty was encouraged, and the feeling of one’s own identity, and even more so, the demonstration of one’s superiority, was declared a disadvantage worthy of punishment. Those who have been indoctrinated with this since childhood have sometimes experienced great disappointment in life. They were constantly faced with the fact that they themselves and people like them, modest, self-critical, compliant, often lose in competition with impudent impudent people who advertise their really “modest” and sometimes non-existent virtues.
Is everything okay with this seemingly correct installation? In a free society, where everyone has the opportunity to maximize their creative potential (if they really want to and if they’re lucky), modesty is simply our recognition of the relationship between the scale of deeds, our own and others’, and the greatness of the world in which we invest our potential.
Of course, these scales are obviously incomparable, but after all, a person does not claim to dominate the world. A person does not need to constantly compare himself with others for self-affirmation, it is enough for him to feel that he is simply doing everything he can, and it is his own realized intentions that serve him as a starting point. He has the right to be proud not of his gift as such, received from nature, but of his efforts to realize it, without which this talent will hang like a dead weight on him. Asking ourselves the question “Have I done everything I could?”, we have no reason either for envy and a feeling of inferiority, or for a feeling of superiority. But this can be the basis for dissatisfaction with oneself, which prompts additional efforts, and not the desire to “put everyone in their place” and thereby win their place from others. The weakness of others does not elevate you, and their achievements do not humiliate, but even inspire. You have your place in the world, you accept it and want to live up to it.
- I don’t like compliments
There is an exact expression of the essence of this modesty: «A person should not try to obscure the sky with himself.» Outstanding personalities and brilliant creators were them because modesty in this sense does not detract from them. In relation to the sky, everyone is equal and no one is forbidden to try to take off.
But there is another understanding of modesty — as a deliberate humiliation of oneself, and such modesty was cultivated during my childhood. The social task of educating such modesty was to make everyone feel the same, so that gifted people consider themselves equal to those who are incapable of it. A person who feels his scale and his destiny, requiring creative efforts, immediately received a reproach for insufficient modesty. Such “modesty” was convenient and beneficial only for those who felt comfortable in the atmosphere of “universal equality” and whom it saved from feeling their own inferiority. It was a legitimate and even, as it were, morally justified way of humiliating and suppressing talented people, depriving them of both the self-awareness necessary for the risk of creativity, and the chances for recognition, which can inspire others to create.
Self-affirmation in creativity is the opposite of arrogance, based on the constant comparison of oneself with others, and it not only does not prevent, but even promotes a critical attitude towards oneself. As a result, a free society continuously develops and succeeds in many different ways.
It is clear that the opposite attitude to the need for modesty as a denial of one’s right to self-affirmation blocks even an attempt at self-realization.
“He who has musk in his pocket does not shout about it on the street — the smell of musk speaks for him.” A person with genuine self-respect does not resort to self-promotion, he simply does not need it — he just needs to not be embarrassed by this feeling of self-sufficiency out of false modesty.