Greatness

I know that I will never solve world hunger, nor will I score the winning try at the RWC or become the next Paul Henderson to Canadian hockey fans, I will never be this idea of greatness, this thing that almost all children and many adults still aspire to. While I see nothing wrong aspiring to be more then you are, I think it is an awful by product of our society to correlate greatness to this idea of iconic figure heads.

Now I do not mean to tarnish what these figure heads do for the world because more people like Mother Teresa or Gandhi would never be a bad thing nor would athletes like Michael Jordan or Cal Ripken Jr. or any number of great athletes who bring new life to their craft. No my purpose is to try and illuminate what it takes to be great and how while we should always strive to best ourselves but at the same time recognize our own great works. Secondly I really do hope that this does not come off as you are all great no matter what…I want to say that you can be great…it just doesn’t have to be because you sit on top of a certain niche.

So, what is greatness then one might ask me. Well let’s look at who I said was great, and what they did. Without getting into direct examples for the sake of time and the fact I might go on a tangent into a nice history lesson of that person, which at this point in time we don’t want. Trust me on this. Did they try to act as someone had before, or tie themselves to the other great of the time, or did they strive to do something completely their own, and in essence be truly unique. Now to be unique in its own sense is greatness as you will always stand out from the next person and really in the end of it. Yet we all strive to be more, to achieve this level of greatness that we assume is what it takes to be remembered.

Now I noted that I probably won’t be doing anything great you probably know I aspire to be a teacher, in fact I do that now, and yeah its good calling but how many teachers can claim fame, yeah some get there by doing something unrelated, others get the shout out when a pupil declares that such and such teacher pushed them that extra, but then again the odds let’s be realistic. Doubtful that anyone of my kids would ever do such a thing…but even then it truly is fame and not greatness because how long can a shout out last…honestly who remembers what grade of teacher helped push Jim Carrey into a more direct path of comedy.

So what is greatness…if not to me any of these things. Well greatness I guess can be summed up as being more then you thought you could. You cannot sit back and do nothing and hope to be that great person, no, if you get out and experience life; touch it. Greatness is not measured by the grand scale of the things, but by yourself and how you view the world. Things will always change around you sometimes beyond your control, but what you can teach each day. Focus on what you can touch, lives you can touch, people who truly matter to you. An example from me just occurred today, I was told that one of my students who were on the verge of dropping English after one week with me has a whole new energy about it and is looking forward to my return. That is greatness to me, because I have given my enjoyment of teaching and learning to someone, and it has in turn I was given something in return. The simple things are what make us great.

So what is greatness…it’s what you make of it, what you do for yourself and that falls unto others.

The wind moves us all, it's how we soar that makes us great