Choosing Greatness

Excerpts from the fifth in a series of six articles from Robert Greenleaf on Mature Living - from the September 1966 Vol. 23 No. 4 AA Grapevine.

Everyone--literally everyone--within his sphere of influence has the chance for true greatness. Whether one makes it or not depends on what one chooses to be, within the circumstances where one now is. The opportunity for true greatness is never in the greener pastures elsewhere. It is always where one now is and within the range of choices available there. Some kinds of achievement are more available in one place than another, but not personal greatness. This is of the moment, where one is at the moment.

Bernard Baruch, who had an unusual perspective from which to view our times, in an interview in 1964 on his ninety-fourth birthday, was asked who he thought to be the greatest man of our age. "The fellow who does his everyday job," he said. "The mother who has children and gets them up and gets them breakfast and keeps them clean and sends them off to school. The fellow who keeps the streets clean--without him we wouldn't have any sanitation. The Unknown Soldier. Millions of men." Any person doing his job well can be great. He may not be widely known; but he can be great in his own eyes and in the eyes of those who know him intimately.

And I tell the story about the old artist who had thought he was too old to paint and was living in idleness when news came of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. He realized at once, as many of us did, that this was the end of an era, and that a sinister new force was at large in the world which would test man's endurance, ingenuity and character as it had never been tested before. He felt a strong urge, as so many of us did, to do something. He was thoroughly aroused and a new energy for action overtook him. Now he didn't do what has become the popular fashion; make a cause out of his new-found energy and start a movement to change the world. He got out his paints and his brushes, stretched a big new canvas and said, "I must paint again. I must paint a great picture, my greatest." One to whom painting doesn't mean much may say, "So what--another painting. What difference will that make?" But look at it from the artist's viewpoint. Art has been his life's work; it is his highest value. What more could a true artist contribute to any situation than his greatest painting? And, to one who is sensitive to meaning in art, no message could be more powerful. There are a few great paintings that have literally moved the world. And where is the artist who doesn't think that he might be the one to paint such a picture?

Now I am not saying, "Don't ever have a cause, or join a movement, or set out to reform someone else." But before one does, one should ask oneself, "Have I done what I reasonably can to achieve greatness where I am and with the immediate circumstances over which I have some influence?" A "cause" can be a screen to obscure an inadequacy in something close to home--oneself or something within one's grasp that is manageable if one will only put the effort into it. The Great Society is not an abstract idea. It is not laws on the statute books or programs to meet needs, important as these are. It is the sum of great people and great institutions: churches, schools, governments, businesses, families. More concern for greatness by individuals and institutions in their own lives and affairs will make less needed a general concern for the state of society as a whole.

It is the sustained effort to take whatever sphere of influence one has, whether it be home, workshop, classroom, church, business, neighborhood, government; take whatever it is and work with skill and devotion on it; but also breathe a great dream into it; make something really distinguished out of it.