Every real thing is surrounded by many counterfeits. That is what makes a simple concept difficult to understand and a simple object hard to classify. Often things are labeled with misleading names so when one thinks he is comparing apples to apples, he is unaware that he is actually comparing apples to cucumbers. When he finds no natural correlation between the two, he either creates a convoluted equivalence in order to draw some conclusion or dismisses the concept as a thing that is much too abstract for \understanding.
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Some things are so rare that their faux counterparts become the new standard and as things are defined by the impostor, the real thing gets lost and forgotten.
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Humility and modesty are two such rarities. They are so uncommon that on the rare occasion we come across them, we don’t know what to do with them because what we are accustomed to call that, is actually the counterfeit version, something else.
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Both have collected such bad publicity over the years that they mean something frigid and lame, but in reality:
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True Modesty is a discerning grace,
And only blushes in the proper place;
But counterfeit is blind, and sculks through fear,
Where ’tis a shame to be asham’d t’appear:
Humility the parent of the first,
The last by vanity poduc’d and nurs’d.
– William Cowper
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A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a thousand words may paint a billion pictures. If I had the choice to master either the camera or the pen, I would choose the pen. A pen can capture what is real and what has not yet been. It can describe the physical world with as much eloquence as it can capture the inner world. It can show thoughts, and describe feelings.