There are faces which one can name by no other word than meek.
They are rare. In the course of many years I have encountered them only a few times.
What impression does a meek person leave? It is difficult to define. Meekness is not a single trait, but a fragile balance of opposites.
It resembles vulnerability. To meet it is to see, at once, a being as defenseless as a child. In meekness there is no trace of the hidden hardness most of us carry, that silent readiness to resist. One feels immediately the absence of threat.
Yet meekness is not weakness. Weakness often irritates. It places a man below me, through age, poverty, or infirmity. Meekness never descends so low. It awakens tenderness, never contempt.
I have seen the unhappy, but not meek. Can the happy be meek?
Meekness is akin to poverty. Yet not every poor man is meek—far from it. If one is wealthy, meekness becomes almost impossible. Riches adhere to meekness no better than resin dissolves in water.
There is also a strange asymmetry between meekness and beauty. In principle, meekness does not require beauty. Yet our eyes struggle to perceive it apart from some degree of loveliness. It is easier to mistake a fair face for meekness than to recognize meekness in the absence of charm. Too striking a beauty, like too evident a deformity, is a poor frame for meekness.
What binds together vulnerability, harmlessness, quiet grace, and modesty into a new essence is innocence. Perhaps this innocence is only appearance. Who can say? But I think it is not the unknowing innocence of a child, which charms by its ignorance. Rather it is an experienced gentleness: a soul acquainted with suffering, yet untainted by cynicism.
