Marvel at the world and its history, but understand your place in it…for without you, it is not so.
We sensationalize the legacies of great men, but we forget the greatest of men only want their legacies to be used as ‘stepping stones.’ The hallmark of true greatness is to be a catalyst for progress. Men of such distinction never see themselves as the end but rather as part of the process that will hopefully lead to that end. It is truly remarkable when one realizes that he/she will not change the world in some sensational fashion, but still recognize that he/she has a part in that play. Greatness is never intentional–it is merely a byproduct of a desire to serve, an inglorious acceptance of a responsibility to contribute to humanity.
We make legends of men and gods of great men. I have come to realize that this is why celebrity exists. This has been a problem that civilizations have faced since antiquity, but at least the quality the Greeks sought was godliness. In the modern world, we have created for ourselves a world of juxtapositions, a world of contraries. The majority of us think of anything new and ingenious that another man has developed as being solely the power of that man’s mind. So, rather than being inspired by such genius to build upon that creation or to tap into our own minds, we shrink in the face of such marvelous opportunity. Instead of taking such opportunities as a wakeup calls to our own potential, we build monuments of worship to greatness and to men. We picture very little overlay in our “comparative venn-diagrams”. An underlying reason is the fact that we tend to take a competitive, rather than a contributory, approach to societal living. We choose to live together in societies under the premise that communal living is a safer and more productive bet for all, but yet we take a zero-sum approach to life. Such great irony we live in.
History does not live for itself, but rather for the future; it only wishes to be built upon, it only wishes to influence the future. In the same vein, greatness only wishes to inspire more greatness. We dishonor the memory of greatness when we loose strength at its sight. The greatest of men are seekers of truth, not of glorification. The idea is always to progress and refine truths, methods, and thinking from one age to the next. To bow down and be defeated by the glory of great achievements is truly a disservices to ourselves and our future because, in that moment, we stunt the progress of society.
