Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul

by Hannah Anderson

The goal of Humble Roots is to understand how pride manifests itself in anxiety and restlessness; and how humility frees us from the cycle of stress, performance, and competition.

Ironically, the heavy burden the people were struggling under, the thing that kept them from the rest, wasn’t simply the weight of other people’s expectations. It was their belief that they had to meet those expectations by their own ability, leading to confidence that they could carry the burden alone. It was nothing other than pride and self-reliance. The same pride and self-reliance that keeps us from experiencing rest as well.

Just as an author gradually reveals the nature of her characters, our words and actions gradually reveal our character and our essential nature.

C. S. Lewis writes, “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.… It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.”17