"Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." - William Shakespeare Twelfth Night
I am revisiting my earliest insecurities lately: I have breached the “100th Query” ceiling in my submissions to literary agents, trying to get representation for my novel. I’m running out of agents and every “no” is an opportunity to remind the young child in me that I’m not good enough, that I don’t have what it takes, that my dream will never be realized. I will never achieve greatness.
Some part of me says that’s o.k. If my book never becomes successful, then I don’t have to deal with success. Oh well. I tried, I can tell myself. And that’s permission to keep on feeling bad about being me.
It’s one of the most basic human emotions. At our very core, every single last one of us wants to be remembered for something. We all want some part of ourselves to live beyond our life span, whether that means creating a child, or an idea, or an invention, a work of art or a book. It’s common knowledge that public speaking ranks above death on the fear factor scale, but on the iwanna scale, I believe the desire to be remembered for something great—beyond the reach of one or two generations—ranks above any other human desire. And that's not necessarily hedonism. That is just simple, elemental addiction to the belief that we will not pass this way again, and dammit, we want it to count for something.
From my own life, I can point to my single greatest accomplishment: my child. She is my opus and I am so proud of her I could bust a gut. She goes to college at the school I chose to attend. I was keen to go there because it was a top-notch university that offered excellent training in my chosen field, and because a very dear friend was going there too. But it was expensive.
Mom and Dad scraped that tuition and room and board together though, and I packed my belongings and went there. For one year. I absolutely hated it, almost immediately. It was a very long year.
But because Mom and Dad had given me that opportunity, our daughter was able to attend the university of her heart's desire. She wouldn't have been able to go there without the university's legacy scholarship, awarded to her because I spent two miserable semesters at that institution.
Does that make Mom and Dad great? Does it get me remembered? Perhaps not. Beyond our daughter, the story is likely never to be told. History will probably not record that fascinating piece of higher education trivia. But it does make me feel like I made a difference. And I hope it makes my folks feel like they made a difference too.
And that IS the difference.
I truly believe that those who are born great, achieve greatness, or have greatness thrust upon them are mostly just following their hearts, trying to have an impact, hoping to make a difference. I believe these special people—people just like you and me—have a God-given passion that absolutely propels them to do a thing. They are ordinary bipeds who passionately pursue a dream without regard for the historical footnote. It is something they can’t not do. That is greatness, in and of itself. That is more greatness—if there is such a thing—than doing a thing just for the accolades.
That realization takes all the pressure off. It frees me to relentlessly follow the desires of my heart out of gratitude to God for the life and gifts I’ve been given, without regard for the footnote. I can leave it to someone else to pass judgment on whether it was great or not.
As Patti LaBelle wisely notes in the song attached below, one of these mornings—it won’t be very long—they will look for me, and I’ll be gone. That’s really the only book I hope to see my name written in.
One of These Mornings
