Permanently humbled is a concept a friend and I talked about today. It happens with a tremendous loss of identity and ability. Becoming disabled or crippled would be an example.
I never realized this happens because sometimes people talk about being humbled as a transitory experience. But with any transitory experience, it ends. Temporarily humbled by a setback, when you overcome it, you regain your lost pride. (Isn’t that the definition of humble: lost pride.)
But I don’t think of humbled that way anymore. I think of being humbled as when circumstances change the way you create your self-esteem, and also that of others. It is a permanent change in perspective; a shift in worldview.
Humbled is when you can’t change the circumstances surrounding you through your power but the circumstances defining you change you forever.
