Humility

Everyone needs a great humbling experience; some may need quite a few.

I have recently been humbled.

Not in profound and overly spiritual way, but in a normal, every day way.

I have found a teaching job that fits for the fall (yes thank the heavens above). I am thrilled, nervous, and excited to learn from the teachers I will be working with and the students I will be writing with.

Yet, as most of us can attest to, student loans are no easy feat. As my mentor friend claims, "When I look at my student loans, it makes me want to cry". Touche. Touche.

Thus, I started hostessing at a restaurant downtown to help fill the summer gap of no student loans and no income, and then to fill the gap of living and eating expenses and my teacher salary in the fall.

I cannot tell you how boring hostessing is. I thought selling clothes was boring. Yet I'm realizing I could put a tangible meaning to helping women and men find outfits that made them feel confident and look good. Hostessing is BORING.

The other managers and veteran hostesses treat us new hostesses like idiots. The worst part is that of all the new hostesses and hosts, I am the oldest....by far. I am working way below my paygrade, doing things I have far too much education to be doing, and working with people (managers, head hostesses, etc) who have spent years and years putting time and effort into the restaurant business....a lucrative business I do not see relevant or important to making our world a better place.

I felt way too good to be doing this, worried about seeing people I knew and wondering how I would explain to them in 2 minutes that yes I have a teaching job, but I am doing this and I just started which is why I'm at the bottom of the totem pole and no I don't want to do this forever!

Then I had an epiphany.....The one who gives the orders, aka says, "please take Andrea party of 6 to table number 70", went to college for interior design and has spent the last 5 years of her life hostessing. If I needed a reality check it was that.

I can and will do this humbling job, that yes my intellect and ability far exceeds....FAR EXCEEDS....and I will do it with pride. It helps. I need humility. I need to work for my life, I need to work for what I believe in and sometimes that means seating people with a smile on my face and a helping hand for the elderly.

I can't help but consider, however, how little people allow humbling experiences to positively influence their life. And how few people actually have humbling experiences. It infuriates me how outrageously entitled my generation is. Don't get me wrong, I believe I deserve my dream teaching job. Yet, I can't kid myself thinking that I will get it my first year of teaching. I can't kid myself thinking I am too good to serve tables and struggle for a few years before I have my dream job.

All the struggles are there to help us realize how deeply we want something. With every terrible interview, with every rough and tough student, and with every humbling day spent seating people at tables...I know more than ever...with my entire soul...that I want to teach and teach well. I want to change the universe and I can do that seating tables or teaching in my dream job.

I think we could all use a little humility here and there, to remind us of what being human is actually all about. Remind us that this world is bigger than you and I.

Love what you do. Love your life. And remember that there is so much out there greater than us to help us to truly live.

“To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.”