Humility

Most of us, whether we know it or not, suffer from a characteristic disease: the umbilicus mundi syndrome, a pathological inclination to place ourselves at the center of things and to imagine that we are more important than we are. From a cosmic point of view, the situation of Homo sapiens is ridiculous. Generally, we act as if the world exists for our sake: we think of everything in terms of our needs, concerns and interests.

We don’t just dominate other species, we prey on them. We don’t just use, we abuse our planet, emptying it of life and filling it with garbage. Out of greed, out of stupidity, or out of both, we have treated nature with such savagery that we have perhaps destroyed it completely. As a rule, we are indifferent to the suffering of others and unable to have essential relationships with them. Far from loving our neighbor, we exploit him, mock him and feel irritated by him, when we do not ignore him outright.

What makes our situation absolutely ridiculous is that, in the larger context, we are profoundly insignificant creatures. Lilliputian despots. A pebble that we pick up at random from a riverbed long precedes us and will last long after us. We are not above the rest of the world; in fact, we are inferior to most things.
The good news is that there may be a cure for this condition. The death of a dear relative, the failure of an airplane engine, car brakes, or elevator can shake us so deeply that if we survive these experiences, we find ourselves completely transformed. It makes us adopt, in our relations with the world or with others, the perspective that we are closer to nothing than to everything else.