The Humble Underdog

It seems that almost all the basketball community went berserk with happiness this weekend when underdog after underdog beat the top dogs. All enjoyed the outcome except, of course, the Goliaths that fell and those that bet for them. 

What makes us like the underdog? Read the pundits and they will give you the many reasons we favor the Cinderella teams.

What I thought about…and this will be way off base for most of you…was humility. For the most part the underdog is humble, just happy to be there. And we like humble people.

Agree or not, humility came to mind when I saw the underdog winners and their supporters celebrating their unexpected victories.  

The following quote is very loosely connected, if at all, with the basketball victories this weekend, but it is worth considering nonetheless. 

Here is C. S. Lewis on humility: 

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. 

If you think you are not conceited, it means you are conceited indeed.  

Without humility we fail to learn, because only knowing that we do not know opens our mind to instruction. 

Without humility we fail to love because the very beginning of love is a sense of unworthiness.