Greatness is not awarded. It is not given. It cannot be bought, or sold. It is earned.
In itself, greatness is nearly impossible to define, and describing it is no easy feat.
Make no mistake; there is no doubt of its existence.
Each day, we stumble upon it, or it is forced upon us, be it by the achievement of others or the staggering truths of life.
Like many other indefinable emotions and ideas, greatness is determined by the perspective of a person.
It just so happens that when a majority of a population feels as one that greatness is deserved, that it is earned.
Lance Armstrong, to any first world child or adult, represents greatness. However, to what significance is riding a bicycle faster then all others with half the manliness to a child suffering from malnutrition in central Africa?
To that child, greatness resides in the food he eats, or simply does not exist at all.
A good deal of the world looks up to Lance Armstrong, and has awarded him the title of "greatness" as a nearly unanimous feeling, but who does he look up to?
Does he see himself as greatness?
Do heroes idealize themselves?
I should hope not. There is no end to what a human can do in one hundred years of life in this world. This place is not boring. It does not run out of opportunities, or of information to learn.
I think greatness in truth, is achieving everything possible. To obtain what seems beyond reach and in the face of all odds, be it civil rights movement, or a deaf composer writing some of the most well renowned and venerated music ever.
Life’s obstacles are chances at greatness. And overcoming them is the gateway to immortality.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, February 1, 2009
It's a Metaphor Within a Metaphor.
"What do you do when every door you open shuts and the walls close in around you?"
Life continues to amaze.
There are people in the middle/upper middle class who basically get stuck.
They are restricted by society, or in other words, money.
Because their salaries are restricted by their bosses who in turn hoard money and make bad decisions with it, the economy has slowly been diving until very recently when the world was hit with a sudden deficit of cash.
And because the world is lacking cash, bosses and the upper class decide to, instead of shortening their own salaries, to cut away unnecessary others, and shorten the salaries of their middle class and upper middle class workers.
To be fair to the high-ups... they don't decide to make budget cuts, they are forced to by the structure of society.
If they took the deficit out of their own pay checks... then they would no longer be upper class, and the as a result, very few rich people would be left over, and then all that is left would be chaos.
It's a system of checks and balances designed to spread the wealth and keep the superpowers at bay by equalizing them. This takes care of itself because rich people like being rich and work hard to maintain their position.
This battle of the wealthy takes a toll on the middle class, and the ones who want to survive, have to work.
It is not long before they're stuck at a dead end job. And the walls close in.
Fortunately for these middle-class plebeians, there is more to life then just work.
The middle class fight to open a door to another bit of life. Maybe sport or acting or music or art or women or something that is not work.
But life continues to amaze. For at any given point... the door is slammed shut. An injury, a stale relationship, a cut etc.
The work remains. The fight for his own existence still sits around.
There are a great deal of people on this planet, and for every man who fails, there are six ready to take his place.
Originality is nearly unreachable.
So what do you do?
I do not think anyone knows. For there are many who have tried to escape.
and just as many who have failed.
There may be one thing that separates any one faceless nameless robot from the next.
And if that one thing may be in existence then it is intensity.
To the middle/upper class citizen,
Keep you're head up, get through it all.
The walls can keep getting closer, and the doors can continuously slam in your face, but they cannot crush you unless you let them.
Some walls have windows.
Life continues to amaze.
There are people in the middle/upper middle class who basically get stuck.
They are restricted by society, or in other words, money.
Because their salaries are restricted by their bosses who in turn hoard money and make bad decisions with it, the economy has slowly been diving until very recently when the world was hit with a sudden deficit of cash.
And because the world is lacking cash, bosses and the upper class decide to, instead of shortening their own salaries, to cut away unnecessary others, and shorten the salaries of their middle class and upper middle class workers.
To be fair to the high-ups... they don't decide to make budget cuts, they are forced to by the structure of society.
If they took the deficit out of their own pay checks... then they would no longer be upper class, and the as a result, very few rich people would be left over, and then all that is left would be chaos.
It's a system of checks and balances designed to spread the wealth and keep the superpowers at bay by equalizing them. This takes care of itself because rich people like being rich and work hard to maintain their position.
This battle of the wealthy takes a toll on the middle class, and the ones who want to survive, have to work.
It is not long before they're stuck at a dead end job. And the walls close in.
Fortunately for these middle-class plebeians, there is more to life then just work.
The middle class fight to open a door to another bit of life. Maybe sport or acting or music or art or women or something that is not work.
But life continues to amaze. For at any given point... the door is slammed shut. An injury, a stale relationship, a cut etc.
The work remains. The fight for his own existence still sits around.
There are a great deal of people on this planet, and for every man who fails, there are six ready to take his place.
Originality is nearly unreachable.
So what do you do?
I do not think anyone knows. For there are many who have tried to escape.
and just as many who have failed.
There may be one thing that separates any one faceless nameless robot from the next.
And if that one thing may be in existence then it is intensity.
To the middle/upper class citizen,
Keep you're head up, get through it all.
The walls can keep getting closer, and the doors can continuously slam in your face, but they cannot crush you unless you let them.
Some walls have windows.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)