Greatness

Shakespeare wrote, “But be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Many people are very good at what they do, but never attain greatness. Greatness is a term handed out with too much ease at present. An athlete runs a good race and is given the sobriquet, great, he isn’t, he’s fast, but he hasn’t earned the word great yet. Being great means that you rise above all others, to join a pantheon of giants, to actually transcend normal expectations and be exceptional, and become immortal.

Just because a footballer scores a great goal, or has a season or two in which he scores a great many, or an athlete can run a bit faster than the next person, or a cricketer hit an incoming ball despite it bouncing in front of him at 100 miles per hour it doesn’t render them great. Even the assumption of greatness by association doesn’t work. Take the example of a rainy day in London. A priest met his friend, the local vicar. They stopped to chat for a moment, and then, as they were parting, the priest said to the vicar, "by the way, Vicar, before you could settle an argument, one of my ladies in the church said I look the image of Jesus Christ.... modesty forbids me having an opinion, but do you agree?" the Vicar laughed in his colleagues face, "You.... look like the Lord? I can assure you, my parishioners are unanimous that I am the living image of Jesus."

They soon nearly came to blows and only stopped by the arrival of the local rabbi who seeing their animosity stopped to speak to his friends. They explained their argument, asking "Jesus was born of a Jewish mother rabbi so you’d be in a good position to judge which of us Rabbi, is created in the image of Jesus Christ?" the Rabbi burst into wild laughter.

" Neither of you" and continued to belly laugh. "In fact" he replied, "I KNOW I am the image of Jesus Christ.... and we can prove it!"

Both the Christian clergymen looked at each other in silence. "Go on, then, prove it!" The rabbi said,” OK, follow me." The three men walked down the backstreets of Kings Cross and eventually arrived at a very run down, seedy area.

The rabbi led the way to a particularly dilapidated house where rooms can be rented by the hour. There’s a notice by the door offering "French Lessons Upstairs" the rabbi said, "Here we go, follow me." He led them up the rickety stairs to a door, which he thumped on, and it was opened by a blonde lady in a negligee, she stared at the rabbi and proclaimed "Jesus Christ.... it's you again!!!"

There are very few greats in sport, or any other human endeavor. Strangely the very greatest of our real heroes, men like Winston Churchill, Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi all had humility in common, and this was not false modesty. A lack of humility in the immodest doesn’t make them great, it makes them louder. A celebrity once said to me, with false self deprecation, "I’m modest about my achievement” and I borrowed the line, “you’ve got a lot to be modest about.” He thought it was a compliment.

It’s the self-aggrandizement of the “I” generation. Look over here; I’m smarter, richer and more amazing than you. The fact that you say you’re great guarantees that you’re not.

Greatness is a much over used word, devalued by this over use to describe people of limited talent and no lasting claim on it. It was, I believe, Winston Churchill who said, “we’re all worms, I just hope to be a glow-worm”. Perhaps the lesson from this is to aim to be as good as we can be, and hope someone else might, one day, label us great.