Meekness, Humility, and Growing Older

Meekness and humility are not the same thing — and the difference matters more than I realized

What I learned in a moment before dawn

There’s a particular kind of quiet that only exists in the last few minutes before sunrise….

I learned it as a child, sleeping outside on camping trips — tucked into a sleeping bag pulled up close to my nose, legs curled underneath me, cold air sharp against my face. From somewhere nearby came the smell of bacon sizzling in a cast-iron pan. And then, cutting through all of it, one small sound.

A sparrow. Just one tiny bird, saying good morning to no one in particular.

I didn’t know it then, but that moment was teaching me something I’d spend the next several decades trying to understand.

It was teaching me how to receive.

Not to perform, not to produce, not to earn my place at the fire. Just to be still and let the morning come. (I still love that awakening hour… though I’ll confess I’m grateful for a mattress now.)

The world I grew up in had other ideas

The world I stepped into after those camping trips didn’t have much patience for stillness.

It rewarded producing. Performing. Achieving. It handed out gold stars for clean rooms and good grades and keeping it all together, and I collected more than my share. I was proud of those gold stars. I still am, a little.

But here’s what I didn’t notice for a very long time: strength had become my identity. Not just something I practiced — something I depended on to feel worthy.

And strength, when it becomes the whole story, has a way of hardening into something else. Even our most sacred words — love, peace, faith — can get weaponized when the person carrying them needs to win. I’ve watched it happen in institutions, in families, in my own heart. The drive to be right, to be recognized, to be the one who really understands….

It’s a long way from a sparrow and a campfire.

Meekness is not what I thought it was

I have heard “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” my whole life.

And for most of that life, I quietly hoped I wasn’t one of them.

Meekness sounded like weakness, and weakness was something to be overcome. If my body felt weak, I exercised. If my mind felt dull, I studied harder. If my soul seemed empty, I was told to pray more, form better habits, keep better company.

Push harder against the weakness. Always push harder.

But lately — and I think aging has something to do with this — I’ve been turning the word over in my hands like a stone I’ve been carrying for years without really looking at it.

Meekness, as I’m beginning to understand it, isn’t about having nothing to offer.

It’s about not grasping.

Not needing to dominate, conquer, or arrive first. Not requiring the world to confirm your worth before you’ll relax into it. That child in the sleeping bag wasn’t trying to own the sunrise. She wasn’t performing her appreciation of it. She was simply present to it — open-handed, quiet, receiving.

That, I think, is meekness. And it has very little to do with weakness.

And then there is humility, which is something slightly different

Meekness, as I understand it now, is how we move through the world. Humility is something more interior — it’s about what we need from it.

A humble person can be extraordinarily gifted and know it. The difference is that she doesn’t need you to know it, too.

I spent decades as a musician — trumpet and violin, concert stages, years of practice, the particular thrill of playing something difficult well. I know what applause feels like. I also know what it feels like when the room is quiet and you wonder if what you offered was enough.

Humility, I think, is being able to play your best either way. To give the gift without needing the room to confirm its value.

That’s harder than it sounds. It is, honestly, some of the most demanding spiritual work I’ve encountered. Because every good thing I’ve done — every piece of writing that landed, every student I encouraged, every friendship I tended — carries with it the temptation to point at it and say see, that was me.

True humility keeps offering the gifts and releasing them. Toward others, rather than toward my own image of myself. It’s studying and teaching and living from a place of openness and gratitude rather than an ego quietly tallying its achievements.

I’m not very good at it yet. I’ll say that plainly.

But I think I’m finally understanding the question — which, at my age, feels like genuine progress.

What aging has to do with all of this

Here is what I didn’t expect about growing older. It forces the conversation.

When strength is no longer something you can simply decide to have — when the body slows, when the gold stars stop coming, when the concert stage is behind you — you finally have to choose. You can grasp harder, prove more, and insist on your relevance.

Or you can open your hands.

Meekness and humility, it turns out, aren’t spiritual ideals for the very devout.

They’re the practical wisdom of anyone who has lived long enough to see that strength alone doesn’t hold.

The sparrow didn’t sing to impress me that morning. She simply sang.

I’m still learning what that means….

I’d love to know where you are with this

Have you spent a long life being praised for strength — for competence, achievement, keeping it together? Are you finding, as I am, that the later chapters have a way of quietly rearranging your capacities, and therefore your priorities?

That some of the things you worked so hard to build feel a little less essential now, and some of the things you barely noticed start to sound more like a sparrow’s song — quiet, and just as real?

What do humility and meekness look like in your life right now? Are they something you’ve found, or something you’re still working out? Leave a thought in the comments or write me a note. There’s no wrong answer here… just good conversation.

Sending you blessings for a full and meaningful life, and inspiration to live it.