NUM242 Recall the definition of humility we developed in the chapter on that soul-trait: humility means occupying your appropriate space, neither too much or too little. The Torah provides a story about order that links clearly to humility. It describes how the people of Israel were told to organize themselves in formation for camping and traveling in the desert: "The Israelites shall camp with each person near the banner, under the flag of their ancestral house. They shall camp at a specified distance around the Tent of Meeting" [this verse]. We read in a midrash that when God told Moses that the Jews were to be arranged in this specific formation, Moses complained that if he specified such an organization, there would be protest. "If I tell Yehuda to camp in the east, they will say they want the south, and so it will be with each and every tribe" (Midrash Rabbah). This story underlies the human tendency to rebel against imposed order. It doesn't matter if the order that is being forced to foisted on us is good, right, useful, or sensible. As long as our "rightful space" is being imposed, we don't want it: "If I tell Yehuda to camp in the east, they will say they want the south." Not that the south is necessarily better than the east or the north, it's just not what you told me to do, and that's the point. Sound familiar? Disorder is often the child of a rebellious ego that resists humbly occupying a rightful space. All that it whispers in your inner ear can be reduced to "I want" or "I don't want." I want to have fun, cleaning up after myself is no fun. I want to keep accumulating stuff, and organizing it is not something I enjoy. I want my leisure, and setting things in order is work. Or… I don't want to take responsibility for my stuff. I don't want to do that. I don't have to. No matter what follows the word "I," there is no mistaking that the subject is "me." Hence the antidote here it would be humility. All the methods for cultivating humility that the Mussar Masters have formulated over the centuries come into play here. … Order is, after all, a kind of a submission of will, and humility fosters submission in place of the ego's self–assertion.