Of course there is the paradox of confidence and humbleness to contend with.
Because one without the other is an incomplete picture, deficient in maturity.
Confidence without humility is arrogance, a masquerade of godly omnipotence, narcissistic to the core.
While self-effacement and the self deprecating modesty of one’s intellectual, spiritual or moral reach on its own robs us of a backbone, a chosen set of knowings and values to own and to stand for.
For it is this that gives us shape, a persona, a structure, something to fight and die for and the boundaries, intentions, convictions and assertions to guide us through life’s waters, and without which, we suffer from a chronic meekness, fearful to choose from a sea of infinite options, preferencing to sit on the sidelines of life.
Confidence is borne of personally hard won inner truths and convictions, no matter how finite they are at the absolute level of unlimited truisms.
And so, wisdom is the juxtaposition of both humility and confidence, of unwaveringly standing in what one has experienced as true and good, while at the same time being willing and open to have this challenged, and dismantled, to willingly kneel to a deeper truth.
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