humility

I blasted through the Rule of St Benedict yesterday. I thought it was a really interesting, humble, and well thought out Biblically-based writing. Obviously, one needs to relate what you are reading to this day and age, as we don't go asking our pastors for permission to strike someone else at church. At least I don't.
I appreciate the way that Benedict always humbly defers to the Bible as the source, and to his own book as a resource.
In the Rule, there are twelve steps of humility.
Humility is something that I naturally rail against. It's not something that comes naturally to me. Now, "humiliation"? That I have some background with. Maybe a lack of natural humility is a defense mechanism against being humiliated.
Coming out on top, having the last word, being the first or the best or the fastest or the whatever...these are things that have always resonated with me. After all, isn't this how we are programmed? In school, we are taught to try be the best. In sports, we must beat the other team at all costs. In business, there are ladders to be climbed and therefore heads and hands to be stepped on. In traffic, be the first off the line when the light turns green. Troll for the parking spot closest to the door of Barnes & Noble. Be sure to get on the shortest line at the supermarket...even if it means running back and forth trying to figure out exactly which line that is. These things are what we are programmed to do. But I don't think we were created for these things.
I am learning humility in real ways these days. I feel like I have a handful of chains attached to the ring in my nose (figuratively!). They pull this way and that...sometimes in different directions at the same time. Sometimes one of the chains gets dropped and it just drags. I'm trying to learn to react (or not react as the case may be) in appropriate ways. Because I don't want the programmed ways of the world to be my ways.

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By the way, if you are interested in reading the Rule of St Benedict, I found a really good version of it here. It is interspersed with helpful, gracious, and sometimes funny commentary by Philip Lawrence, OSB, Abbot of Christ in the Desert.