Jonny Son on Humility: “To understate myself and my work has served as something that might be holding me back.”

From a WSJ Magazine feature called Soapbox—this one about humility:

Jonny Sun

“I grew up on this idea that humility is an objectively good thing. But lately I’ve begun to understand that there are trappings to it, where I feel like my own preference to understate myself and my work has served as something that might be holding me back.

For those of us who have been socialized to take up less space—or to take up no space at all, to feel outside the center of the room—I wonder what humility does to further that within ourselves. Am I just removing myself, or shrinking to make myself even smaller?

I think intrinsically my feeling is it’s good to have humility, but I’m also understanding that maybe there’s a way to do that but also still be vocal and visible and assertive with my work and with myself.”
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Sun is an illustrator and author, most recently of Goodbye, Again: Essays, Reflections, and Illustrations.