Personal Statement: Humble vs. Meek

Answer to a a question posted on quora.com:

How do you convey the fact that you're humble in a personal statement?

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I think there is a huge river that exists in our imagination and brains that has not yet been charted. On the one side is humility. On the other is meekness. I often confuse them and do not know if I have the ability to make the distinction useful. Maybe someone else can.

Some of the world's best writers were humble. David Foster Wallace was one. If you read (or I would suggest the audible.com version to hear "his" voice) of his unedited interview with Rolling Stone you will hear how humble the man was. His students all said the same thing. But he was anything but meek and his words are among the best written in the last century.

And then of course there is Emily Dickinson. We seem to think of her first as meek, hidden in Amherst upstairs in her room while guests shuffled downstairs. But her words are full of fire and violence, and unmatched beauty. Her riddling words are often questions rather than answers. 

She knew she did not know and that to me is humility. Others might disagree.
12 step programs teach humility as a necessity to be a contributing human being. In some ways it is the central tenet of the programs. A number of times I have heard it said that people in those rooms have huge egos but almost no self-esteem. The programs are set up to reverse the weight on the scale of moral being.

So what does all this mean? I am not sure, but I have read thousands and thousands of essays and the ones that are often most memorable are ones that underscore to us that those "little unremembered acts of kindness" (WC Williams) are what that egomaniac Ezra Pound called "luminous details". It is in a detail, a description, a slipped in verb or a worthwhile suggestive simile that we remember at day's end. It is the bull in the china shop that gets in trouble. And sometimes trouble is good too. We remember those bulls too sometimes for better, often for worse.  But a gentle caress of words without the suppliant’s knee or hand covering the smile or even a subtle critique that moves our hearts and well as our minds creates a mood that promotes grace from the Olympians sitting in judgment of applicants. Sometimes.

The meek who will inherit the earth are the mute animals who will not be able to speak of end of humanity should the angry men of the world win the war of words first. The humble may keep them at bay with the complex simplicity of well wrought urns of words.