I had the pleasure of meeting a local university president yesterday. Somewhere in our conversation, he mentioned that he reads my columns and had even shared a few of them before.
I smiled, thanked him, and did what I usually do when someone compliments my writing. I became a little awkward.
I have never quite known what to do with praise. Criticism is easier. You can argue with it, explain yourself, even go home convinced the other person was wrong. A compliment simply sits there. Someone tells you that something you wrote mattered to them, and for a moment, you don’t know where to put the feeling.
Driving home, I found myself thinking about a story I have carried with me for years. It is a story about a cup.
The story, told by Simon Sinek in Leaders Eat Last, is about a former Under Secretary of Defense who returned to a conference he had attended years earlier. The first time, he was the acting Under Secretary. He flew first class, was driven to the venue, stayed in a nice hotel and was served coffee in a ceramic cup.
Years later, he returned to the same conference. But he was no longer the Under Secretary. He flew coach, found his own way to the venue and, when he asked for coffee, was directed to a machine and given a Styrofoam cup.
Same man. Same conference. Same coffee. Different cup.
The ceramic cup had never belonged to him. It belonged to the position.
I have thought about that story many times because we are all, in one way or another, carrying ceramic cups around. Sometimes the cup is a job. Sometimes it is money, a title, a house, a reputation, a following or simply the feeling that people need us. We hold these things long enough and begin to believe they are part of us.
That is where we get into trouble.
I have watched people become so attached to their positions that they could not imagine life without them. They could not imagine someone else sitting at their desk, signing their papers, answering their phone or being introduced with the title they once carried.
I understand it. There is a particular comfort in being needed. There is an even greater comfort in being important. But neither is the same as being valuable.
That is something I am still learning myself.
Yesterday, when the university president told me he reads my columns, part of me wanted to dismiss the compliment. I wanted to say, “Oh, it’s nothing.” But that would not have been fair to him. So, I thanked him.
Later, I realized that perhaps humility is not refusing a compliment. Perhaps it is accepting one without building your identity around it.
You can be happy that somebody liked your work without deciding that you are a great writer. You can be proud of an achievement without believing you are entitled to it forever. You can enjoy a position without believing you have become the position.
That distinction becomes especially important when you look at people who have occupied enormous chairs.
Tim Cook spent 15 years as Apple’s CEO after succeeding Steve Jobs in 2011. In September 2026, he stepped down from the CEO position and became Apple’s executive chairman, with John Ternus taking over as CEO.
Imagine carrying a title like that for 15 years. Imagine how many people introduce you by it, how many doors open because of it, how accustomed you become to being the person in the room everyone wants to see.
Then imagine handing it to somebody else.
There is a lesson in that which has little to do with Apple. Every chair eventually has another occupant, the CEO’s chair, the president’s chair, the editor’s chair, the manager’s chair, the teacher’s chair. Even the chair at the head of the family table changes in ways we sometimes notice only after the room has become strangely quiet.
We tend to think of these transitions as losses. Sometimes they are. But they are also reminders.
The position was never really ours. We were caretakers.
For a few years, perhaps for a few decades, somebody trusted us with something that existed before we arrived and will continue after we leave. Our responsibility was never to possess it. It was to take care of it and, if we did our job well, leave it in good enough condition for the person who comes next.
That sounds simple. It is not.
Because while we are sitting in the chair, people treat us differently. They return our calls faster. They ask what we think before deciding what they think. They may even bring us the ceramic cup. After a while, we forget that the cup is not proof of who we are. It is simply what they give the person sitting there.
This is why I think the most revealing moment in a person’s career is not when they receive the title. It is when they lose it.
Watch what happens when the applause stops. Watch how someone treats the receptionist after leaving office. Watch whether the former boss can still listen to a junior employee. Watch whether the person who once had power can sit quietly in a room where nobody knows who they used to be.
That tells you something.
Humility is not really about how you behave when you have nothing. It is about what happens to you when you have something, and whether you remember that it can be taken away.
I think we should enjoy the ceramic cups we are given. If you worked for the promotion, enjoy it. If somebody praises your work, say thank you. If you built something you are proud of, be proud of it. If people trust you with responsibility, take it seriously.
Drink the coffee. Just remember that the cup is not yours forever.
I thought about that again after meeting the university president. His compliment was a gift, and I am glad he gave it to me. But it was never something I could own.
Neither is the title. Neither is the applause. Neither is the chair.
We are given these things for a while. We hold them, hopefully take good care of them, and eventually hand them on.
Maybe that is all humility asks of us, to know the difference between what is ours and what has merely been entrusted to us.
So, when the ceramic cup is in your hands, enjoy it. And when somebody else gets it, don’t think you have become less. You are still the person who drank the coffee. The cup was never the point.
