Small tidbits and Sparks of wisdom

The ten circumstances listed in Shaar Ha’Anavah all point to one truth: a person who thinks he is in control eventually learns—sometimes gently, sometimes through hardship—that everything stands on the will of Hashem. Health, money, honor, position, friends, even the breath in one’s lungs—none of it is guaranteed. A man walks confidently on his own two feet, and then suddenly he is forced to depend on someone else. A person feels strong one year and then discovers what weakness is. Someone who thought he was self-made finds himself embarrassed when he has to borrow bread. All these moments shake a person awake.

The point is not humiliation for its own sake. The point is clarity. Hashem does not need a long process to alter a man’s whole reality. One second is enough. One phone call, one doctor’s report, one lost deal, one unexpected kindness—everything can be rewritten in the blink of an eye.

That awareness breaks arrogance more effectively than any philosophy textbook. When a person realizes that life can swing sharply without warning, he finally understands his place. He stops living with the illusion that he is the master of his own strength. He starts noticing how fragile every part of existence is.

That fragility is not meant to paralyze. It’s meant to anchor a person in Hashem. When troubles hit, the heart bows. When someone does kindness for him, he feels small because he knows he didn’t earn it. When the Creator rebukes him or when he makes a cheshbon hanefesh and sees his own failings, he is ashamed because he realizes how much good Hashem gave him and how little he gave back.

And the final blow to arrogance is the one no one can escape: the day a person understands that life does end, and that in the end, nothing follows him except his deeds. That truth humbles even the strongest man.

A person who carries all that in his head lives differently. He knows that Hashem can lift him higher than he deserves or drop him lower than he ever imagined—instantly. And because he knows that, he walks through the world with a quieter soul, a more careful tongue, and a mind constantly turning back to one thought:

“Everything is from Hashem, and everything can change in a moment.”

That is humility—not weakness, not self-erasure, but honest awareness of reality.

Ten circumstances induce humility and lowliness in an arrogant individual.

1. When he suffers loss of vitality in natural functions, due to illness, natural imbalance, or frail constitution, he is humbled as a result, and supplicates God and human beings, as it says: “He humbled their heart through hardship” (Tehillim 107:12).


2. When one meets with misfortune or suffers poverty, and becomes dependent on others after not having been previously dependent on them, he is humbled before them and his spirit is too broken to behave proudly in his sad condition, as it says: “And everyone who is left in your house will come to bow low to him for a bit of money and a loaf of bread, and will say, ‘Please assign me to one of the priestly duties, that I may eat a bit of bread’” (Shmuel I, 2:36).


3. When another person showers him with favor and shows him much kindness, he humbles himself before him, as it says: “Many court the favor of a generous man, and everyone is the friend of a man who gives” (Mishlei 19:6).


4. One who is in debt to his fellow and is unable to pay it will humble himself before him, as it says: “If you do not have with what to pay, why should he take your bed from under you?” (ibid. 22:27).


5. One who is held in captivity by his enemy will be humble before him and bowed in spirit, as it says: “They pressed his feet with fetters, iron was clamped on his soul” (Tehillim 105:18); “And if they are bound in chains, they will be caught in the cords of affliction” (Iyov 36:8).


6. A slave who cannot redeem himself from bondage to his master will humble himself before him, as it says: “Behold, as the eyes of slaves unto the hand of their masters, as the eyes of a maid unto the hand of her mistress” (Tehillim 123:2).


7. When a person is beset with troubles and tragedy, his spirit is broken and his heart humbled, as it is written: “If then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they accept their punishment” (Vayikra 26:41).




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8. When one makes a personal accounting of how he has rebelled against God in return for His kindness, and defied Him through it instead of offering praise, he will humble himself and feel embarrassed and ashamed before God, as it says: “My God, I am embarrassed and ashamed” (Ezra 9:6).

9. When the Creator rebukes a person and puts him to shame for rebelling against Him, he humbles himself and is frightened, as He said of Achav: “Have you observed how Achav has humbled himself before Me?” (Melachim I, 21:29).

10. When a man feels that death is approaching and his day is coming, and he thinks of the terror of death and of the final judgment and reckoning, he will feel humbled and bowed and will think little of himself, and he will regret that his days have passed and that his life is coming to an end without his providing himself with good deeds to precede him when he sets out on his journey, as it says: “Sinners in Tziyon are frightened” (Yeshayahu 33:14).