Our First Core Value
We started Moment Architects because we recognized two things: first, architecture is a service industry; and second, most architects treat their clients as if the client is the one doing the serving.
This is a problem in our industry, and it is for this reason that our first core value is “be humble”.
What does it mean to be humble?
To understand what something means it is often helpful to first understand what it does not mean. Being humble is not the same as belittling oneself. Humility is not found in thinking yourself inadequate, worthless, or insignificant.
C.S. Lewis says that “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less.”
Humility is Truth
Saint Thomas Aquinas said, “Humility is Truth.” It is living out the deepest truth of things. It is easy to misunderstand humility as an unwillingness to acknowledge our own unique talents. As if a man who excels at tennis can only be humble if he never admits how good he is at tennis. In the light of the statement by St. Thomas, though, this is not humility at all. If a man is truly good at tennis, it would be truthful to admit he is good. Not to boast about it, but to admit it.
True humility, though, goes to the deepest truth. The deepest truth is that the man is good at tennis because God gave him a unique gift, or combination of gifts, that allowed him to excel. Therefore, the humblest thing the man could say about his talent is to admit how good he is, and give the praise to God for his unique ability.
Humility is a virtue
Humility is a virtue, and every virtue has an opposite vice. The vice opposite the virtue of humility is Pride. We can understand a little more about humility, then, by learning more about pride.
What is pride?
Pride is the sin of idolizing oneself; of behaving and believing that I am above reproach, that no one, including God, has any business telling me what to do. Pride, in its emptiest form, is not necessarily a denial of God, but a denial of God’s authority. A denial of God’s right to tell us what we should and should not do.
Humility, being the opposite of pride, can therefore also be described as an attitude of openness to being corrected. Humility is the willingness to admit that I don’t know everything, and even those things I think I know, I could be wrong about.
Less of Me…
Further than that, though, to embody a spirit of humility is to treat every person we encounter as if we are his or her servants. Going back to the quote from C.S. Lewis, if humility is thinking of yourself less, we can deduce that if we’re thinking of ourselves less, we are then thinking of others more. The more we think of others, the easier it is to anticipate their needs, and to provide what they need before they even ask for it. This is the level of humble service we should strive for, to anticipate the needs of others.
What does humility look like in our workplace?
For us, being humble in the workplace starts with recognizing that our unique talents are gifts from God, given to be used for the good of others. Therefore, when we do anything for work, we should ask ourselves, “Who am I serving, myself, or my client?”
The homes we design will one day return to the dust from which they came, because like it or not, the physical products of our work, what is seen, is transitory, and no amount of kick-out flashing or continuous insulation will ever change that. But the choices we make, the way we love and serve, what is unseen, will have eternal significance.
Saint Paul said, “Whatever you do, do from the heart, as for the Lord and not for others” Colossians 3:23, and I believe this to mean that when we serve others, we are in fact serving our Lord.
Put Our Service to the test
So we invite our clients to put our service to the test, and at the end of the age, when the newest design trends are out of fashion, and the latest advancements in building science are proven to cause more problems than they solve, I hope the final remnant of our work will be the sound of the words we all long to hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” Matthew 25:21