Greatness

The theory of greatness has always intrigued me.  Now with the access to tv and internet, finding out about the greatest professors, thinkers, presidents or kings, athletes or actors is only a click away.  

It is very easy for athletes to gage how great they are.  No one keeps better records then professional sports and you can probably attribute that to all the "great" record-geeks out there.  The reason why they can gage it so easily is because most of the time its a tangible record.  The athlete could be the youngest player to hit 500 home-runs, or a record I just heard this morning that Lebron James was the first MVP to lead his team in just about every category: points per-game, assists, rebounds, steals, blocks and probably a few more.  When you take the Yankees of the late 90's, they were slated as one of the greatest teams of all time.  They won 4 out of 5 World Series and if I remember correctly, most of them were in dominating fashion.  This kind of stuff can be seen and evaluated on the spot, in current time but there are other people who's recognition of greatness will have to wait.  

My main concern is for the professors and thinkers because they spend their entire lives devoted to coming up with theories that may or may not be socially accepted when it was presented, but has an enormous impact on today's society.  I can honestly say that I can not think of a theory that a person has come up with within the last 20 or so years that has changed my life.  By all means, please inform me if I have over looked something but as for now I stand tall in my comment.  The reason why I'm saying this is because when thinkers like Sigmund Freud and Viktor Frankl come up with the theories of the unconscious mind or logotherapy, respectively, how well accepted were they at that time.  In the present time, could we be looking over some of the greatest ideas and theories man has ever come up with?  And if we are, is it naive that we don't notice and/or accept it now?  

There is a question that I most often ask myself and I am using this platform to show the readers what goes through my mind.  I always ask myself if I am a leader or a follower.  And there is no clear cut answer.  Some would argue that if there is no clear cut answer then you can't be the leader and are a follower by default.  The reason why I am bringing this up is because I feel that this is one of the factors that helps suppress one's belief in something.  Freud, Frankl, our founding fathers, civil and women's rights activists and many other key figures are all leaders.  They all came up with a theory or stood up for a cause that would make them live on in history.  But these people weren't accepted by the public with open arms.  We'll take our founding fathers as an example.  Breaking away from Great Britain was something everyone wanted to do with none of the penalties (WAR!).  At that time, there was no national army for the 13 Colonies.  It was all individual militias running around with rifles or hopefully at least pitchforks.  So George Washington and John Adams who were both crucial parts in building our nation, had to convince the colonies that this was a good idea and that was no easy task.  

Even after the war, after we won our independence from G.B., the colonies struggled more then ever before because they didn't have a direct line of supplies, much of which came from the same country they just finished fighting with.  This weighed on a lot of people, wondering if it was the right choice to go to war with the proverbial hand that feeds you.  So before I go off the road here, lets recap.  The secession from Great Britain was something the the 13 Colonies had to do but was fought on by anyone who would listen.  Over 230 years later, looking back at what happened in 1776, we see how how special our founding fathers were to the making of this great country of ours even though it took them a while to figure it out for themselves.

I guess to wrap up this rant of a blog post, I want to leave the reader with a few questions about greatness that might not necessarily have a clear cut answer:

• How is greatness measured?
• How long does one take to be labeled great?
• How many people have to be influenced to be great?
• Is there an imaginary mandatory time line that one has to pass through before being great?
• Are you great?