23 Jan A Giant Looks at Himself and Sees Nothing

I came across the line in a slightly roundabout way. I was watching old Kanye West interviews and clips again, the kind you return to when you are trying to work out whether someone lost their way or whether the world simply stopped listening properly. Somewhere in that orbit is his mother, Donda West, calm and firm in the way only mothers can be. She once said, “A giant looks at himself and sees nothing.” It is one of those sentences that sounds simple until it starts following you around.

The first thing it made me think about was power and humility. There is something disorienting about growth, especially when it comes quickly or publicly. You start off aware of your limits because life keeps pointing them out. Over time, success dulls that feedback. People laugh at your jokes a bit harder. Doors open faster. Mistakes get explained away. None of this requires bad intentions. It just accumulates. The warning in that sentence is not aimed at small people. It is aimed at people who have become large without realising how easy it is to lose self-awareness in the process. Humility is not about pretending you are insignificant. It is about staying in honest contact with who you are when the noise dies down.

The line also exposes how poor we often are at seeing ourselves. I know this is something I have struggled with in the past. External markers are seductive because they are easy to count. Followers, money, reach, influence, productivity.

Internal understanding is slower and far less flattering. Knowing why you react the way you do. Knowing what you are compensating for. Knowing what you are afraid of losing. A giant can be surrounded by evidence of success and still have very little insight. In fact, the larger your external life becomes, the more deliberate you have to be about cultivating an inner one. Otherwise, you grow impressive and hollow at the same time, which is a strange and fragile way to live.

As this quote stayed with me for the whole week, there was also something closer to home than I expected. When I think about that sentence now, I think about my mum. Before she passed in 2024, she had a way of seeing through whatever version of myself I was presenting that week. Not harshly, just clearly.

She was not impressed by titles or busy schedules. She was interested in whether I was tired, whether I was still kind, whether I was becoming harder or softer as life unfolded. Watching Kanye, now without that grounding voice in his life, made the absence feel louder. Wisdom has weight when it comes from someone who loves you and is not trying to take anything from you. Losing that voice leaves a silence that success cannot fill.

“A giant looks at himself and sees nothing” is not a critique meant to humble you publicly. It is an invitation to look more honestly at private. Growth is not dangerous. Blindness is.

Have an amazing weekend,

M.T. Omoniyi