What was your most humbling experience?

Having the poop survey I submitted qualify.
I'm sooooooooooooo sorry!

I can't think of any humbling experiences at all.

Nothing really comes to mind. Sorry topper.

I'm curious-if you are so embarrassed about that survey, why didn't you delete it during qualification?

Well, I'm not completely sure how this site works. It's doesn't take long, but that was the second survey I wrote. I was testing the waters at the time. I was experimenting with the process of constructive criticism and revision. Last I checked unqualified, it had a 43% so I figured it would just get voted off once and for all. Live and learn. This is a great place, I can't remember the last time I've been so intellectually stimulated. (or laughed so hard)

Getting married and the subsequent divorce was pretty humbling in my book.

You might try clicking on the Help link at the top of this page. It does explain a lot about the qualification process, etc and gives you some links about Bill Marrs (the site creator) and John Romkey (who maintains the server for the site).

Maybe when I was a grad-student. Much of grad school was humbling, but one particular day springs to mind. I and a few of my peers were struggling with a very difficult painting subject and technique. It was exhilarating to be pushed so far to the edge of our abilities. After a couple of days working on this piece, a very young freshman (undergrad) came in to the paint deck to work on the same subject. It flowed out of her easily and gracefully. I learned that she was not even in the painting class because her father prohibited her from studying art or theater. After that project I never saw her again. I think she was in the economics program.

When my brother died unexpectedly.

Driving through the Rockies. The size of those mountains just underlines the great forces around us and how small and inconsequential we are...

To date, working with a software god has been regularly humbling (albeit extrememly educational). I'm sure that after boot camp, I'll have a whole new level of humble to talk about...

any time a patient dies at work is extremely humbling!!

When I lost my son.

I was generally considered to be one of the brightest and most academic students at my last school. When I was 14 we were set a homework to write about the emotions of a woman in a story we had studied. I wrote mine and the teacher asked some of us to read them out in the lesson. First was a girl who had somehow managed to get right inside the head of this thoroughly repellent character and flesh her out and make her so much more. I remember just sitting there with her words washing over me and *knowing* that I could never write so well. I refused to read mine out.

I don't think I've done any creative writing since then (apart from the occasional piece I had to do for school) even though before that I'd written and written and written. Poetry is all I write now. Maybe I'll revisit writing in the fiture, but I'm not sure. I could never write like that.

In all seriousness, I think that reading your comment has just become my most humbling experience...

((hugs))

I've had a lot of them. Learning people who I thought to be my friends really weren't. Or those I thought to be decent not to. Sort of brought me on my knees and made me realize how cruel the world was. Made me listen to Radiohead a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you.

When I was 12 years old I prided myself on being able to play chess very well. More importantly I LOVED the game. I often impressed many adults with my ability to play. (mostly family members and school teachers) That year I went to summer-camp where chess was one of the few things to do. I boasted that I had never been beaten, assuming that no peer would be able to beat me because I had provided such a enigmatic challenge for adults. Well, some kid who was a few years older than me beat me in a handful of moves. I don't... care for chess anymore. I'll play, but it's like passion died. Great survey.

mmmm, reading these comments first I think maybe I'm confused by the word humble as the number of options that sprung to mind were when I thought I was crap and then it was pointed out I'm not by some event. I think thats modesty or something.

I'm a very humble person anyway. I don't think I'm better than anyone else and so things don't necessarily surprise me.

I'm confused now.

I think a humbling experience would be something like when you are too confident about something, and then you have an experience that takes the confidence down some.

Yeah, then I don't think I've had one. I don't have confidence in the first place.

Bummer. Do you have too little confidence?

I'm barely confident enough to reply to this comment!

No, I reckon people on this site imagine me to be different to what I really am. Some how the Internet is different. But then again maybe my own perception of myself is different than what I really am (if that's possible).

For example I go out on a weekends because I love dancing. After a few pints I get on the dancefloor and do my thing. Which fortunately isn't as bad as it sounds as the clubs I go to you get a lot of guys out dancing on their own. So, I went out with one guy - real confident etc. and he said I don't know why I consider myself unconfident because he himself didn't feel confident on the dance floor and also I did a lot of Amateur Dramatics and it takes a certain amount of confidence to get up on stage.

But with regards to this survey. If I find someone who does something better than me then I think - 'Well, that makes sense'. It just does.

*goes to hide behind the sofa*

You must be better than others at something, and it certainly isn't hiding, as you told me where you hid.

This whole last work week.
I am a new person.
Humbled.

oh, sweetie, what happened? *kiss*

I started a new job. I saw and did things this week that have changed my entire being. I am humbled by humanity. I cannot really put into words how caring for these people with Alzheimer's related dementia is shaping my whole view of life. When I leave each day after work I want to cry tears of joy that I am free to walk away, climb into my car, drive, cook for myself, be responsible for my family, toilet on my own without assistance, remember what happened five minutes before, walk with ease, play, go out to eat, have a glass of wine, do my own laundry, sleep without diapers on, be peaceful and not frightened confused paranoid depressed....I could go on and on. I also want and do cry tears of despair for these sweet shriveled people whose dignity has been stolen, whose family do not know how to cope and so mostly stay away, who have so much to tell me but cannot find the words, whose ears don't hear well whose eyes cannot see well, whose bodies are betraying them. This disease is horrible. It steals their golden years. They cannot travel or play canasta, they cannot go on a cruise or play bingo, they cannot brag about their grandchildren. They shuffle about, afraid of falling or wander aimlessly looking for an exit, trying to find their home that doesn't exist anywhere anymore except in their minds. They see things that are not there. ....and sometimes they wink at me...or kiss my cheek spontaneously or thank me for cleaning them up when they've soiled themselves in small frail voices....or tell me I look pretty......

Humble doesn't even quite cover what it is I feel.....

I was complaining about not having anything to do on my days off when a girl that was with us told us she just lost her job. I tried to get her a job where I worked. I wished that she would get those days off really soon.