I wouldn’t even know where to start. True genius or even very high intelligence is humbling, exceptional acts of selfless kindness are humbling, the universe is humbling. I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to not be humble.
We should all feel humbled by dogs.
That there are people living today who not only lived through fundamental changes in the way the world works, but who were instrumental in bringing about those changes. I think particularly of Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, and James Watson, one of the discovers of DNA. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to see the change you made have such a profound impact.
Of course you mean one of the discoverers of the double helix structure of DNA. DNA was already known.
This is something I dislike about AI-composed music; the prospect of hearing something marvelous in the future but not being able to think anymore “a human did this.”
Being a musician, I’m loving all of the music comments.
I was playing a show a few nights ago and, afterwards, a man that I knew came up and thanked me profusely. He told me that he had a brutal week at work, and told me that our music was his therapy.
By day, he’s a cardiologist at a very busy VA hospital. He thanked me for making him feel better. I looked into his exhausted eyes and thanked him for working so hard to save lives. What I do is fun and rewarding, but it is completely insignificant by comparison.
I’ve been trying to learn Japanese for about four years now, through a combination of a lot of time on Duolingo and a lot of questions and discussions (some actually in Japanese!) with my Japanese-born wife. My struggles with this endeavor, along with the time I’ve spent in Japan as a tourist with my wife, have cemented my humility in the presence of people who:
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achieve such fluency in a second language that are able to hold a job in which they exclusively or almost exclusively rely on that second language, and
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have the fortitude to move to a new country, adapt to its culture, and thrive there.
My wife went to college and grad school here in the US; she earned her PhD and has continued living here since then, with her professional skills bringing her great career success. A friend of mine, also from Japan, followed a similar path. I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Japan now with my wife, and we’re talking about maybe living there for part of each year after we retire, but I can’t get my head around the idea of doing what she did, i.e. moving there and living independently as a young single person with enough linguistic fluency and self-confidence to pull it off. I’m humbled by what she and my friend and so many others like them have dared to do.
There’s a Korean restaurant near me, a small mom-and-pop operation (looks like grandma and one or two of the adult kids help out from time to time too). It’s been there for many years, good stuff, my wife and I get takeout from there a lot. Opening and running a successful restaurant in the US is monumentally difficult even for a native English speaker born and raised in the US, but this family has faced language and cultural obstacles that must have added a whole other layer of difficulty. I’m humbled by what they’ve achieved.
Whenever I see a “disabled” dog (blind, amputee, deaf, etc.) whooping it up like there’s no tomorrow — enjoying life to the max — it makes me re-think my own petty personal miseries.