What is Modesty?

I give you what I wrote verbatim because it proves the point of the exercise.

Update, thanks to the arrogant PhD candidate in Philosophy, I am reminded this was supposed to be "moderation". A conversation which turned debate and got me sufficiently ruffled made modesty stick. I will redo in the journal but I think this stays.

I almost wish I'd not read what others thought before I write this. It feels like my words are not my own.

Modesty- like Buddha says-the middle way. That which is between 2 extremes and yet that does not look like an entirely virtuous thing. at least not by itself.

Which leads me to ask if Modesty is {a good thing}... if it can be.

Not overly showy, not gaudy, nor excessively eccentric. Maybe tempered is a better way to put it.

Like living, or showing less than your full potential is the good. It implies it is only relative to what other people can see.

Which underlies cultures defined by the customs and tradition that preach it. Think Islam and even Hinduism (with the qualification that the koran makes the same demands of its men and women. but which do you know it to be imposed upon? and is modesty itself something you can impose). both thought of women as temptations that distract men from God. Are women above such temptations?

You are always worried what other people are thinking
and what they would think

You are always worried what other people are saying
and what they would say

So I say... Modesty is one of the limitations we put on ourselves. The way we hand over the power we hold in potential to the idea of someone else.

the mind f*ck of I will be what I think you want, in the sense of not overly in the negative direction. Submissive in a sense but we don't criticize overly modest. What we imagine good would look like personified?

...and then be surprised if you are less than mesmerized with a lack of genuine me?

If we had it to do for ourselves, in the context that no one else would ever see... how modest would you be? and I contend that it is not the same as humble. Humility is the personal virtue. at least, that's what I think.