Greatness

People have always feared new things and for good reason. There are always people around trying to fool us, or take advantage of us, or use us, so until the new becomes common, those who don't really understand it, or what it is used for, or why it is useful will remember, fondly, those days before it existed.

Remembering is comfortable. Aging takes away many of our faculties. Eyes, dim, muscles atrophy, health ebbs away, but the joy of remembering is kind of like popping a DVD into its player. Suddenly a distant event is right here. My heart can still pound with the excitement, or ache with the beauty. Love can smooth out the rough spots, sometimes erasing them entirely. The past is perfect -- perfectly ours to remember as we will.

We all know the two extremes of the rememberers. Those who grew up in Eden where the world was simple and perfect and the sun shone every day on the vaguely misty gardens full of puppies and kittens wearing bows around their necks while sitting at tea parties with unending plates of homemade chocolate chip cookies before them. And the others who had to walk ten miles, uphill, to school, in freezing weather, wearing only threadbare coats and carrying a lunch of one baked potato to keep their hands warm. Both ending up as better human beings because of this.

And remember how much more innocent the world was before chariots sped down Roman roads, or people learned to read and write and share their inflammatory ideas, or the Pony Express quickly spread bad news across the continent. Imagine the joy of a life lived without the telegraph , or telephone, who both kept people from speaking face to face! Imagine what it was like when children still died daily from tetanus, or whooping cough, or polio and survivors bore smallpox scars all over their bodies.

The road to success depends on each one of us using whatever is available for good purposes. We really don't want to go back to the old good ole days when the cure for cancer is in the future and the end of war lies beyond that.

Greatness lies within each one of us. How we use what is available makes all the difference. Educate yourself. Think. Be great.