“The quality of being relatively moderate, limited, or small in amount, rate, or level” is what google answer me when I ask what the word means.
But I also read things as : “a person is modest if he or she is very successful but does not call attention to this” Modest generally means "big enough but not huge" — like a modest house or a modest income. An ambitious person will not be satisfied with modest progress.
There you go: the answer to my question whether I need to continue trying to pretend as if I am modest. I am probably too ambitious to be modest.
In the 18th century people wanted to be modest, but it was a way to describe an appearance rather than that it had a real substance. I think that is still very much the case , it is not what you say but how you say it that makes others think someone is modest. It is about the way you dress, the way you act, the way you dance,…
I am not sure anymore if I want to be seen as a modest person, I do want to be seen as natural but I do think that modesty should not stop you from being naturally ambitious. If you are ambitious you wake up in the morning and you feel excited about what the day that is ahead will bring. Will you make new friends, discover new passions, break your personal records, read interesting things, have a chitchat talk with someone you never met before?
Because when being modest costs you energy to hide behind ‘a look’, this might work contra productive, as we pretending to be someone we are not.
Is there something wrong with making your dreams reality?
Is that not what we tell our children: to dream, and we read them all kinds of stories and then suddenly society pops up in the lives of our children whispering in their heads that they should be modest about things, because we might hurt others showing how much we believe in our dreams.
What if we tell this voice inside to stop whispering and show others that our dreams might become reality if we are ambitious enough?
