Basking in My Greatness

I am a really, really great person.

I didn’t say I am a great writer or a great meeting facilitator or a great money maker or a great technology user or a great soccer coach. I also don’t claim to be a great husband or father, roles that are objectively more important over my lifespan.

But I am a great person. Superb, really.

I never do anything to intentionally hurt people – even when they have hurt me first. I greet everyone I know or meet with a smile and an enthusiastic interaction. I feed my wife’s cats consistently and without complaint, I eat vegetables and go outside daily even when it is cold, and I dutifully recycle my glass, aluminum, cardboard, and plastics even though I have serious doubts about what happens after they are dumped all together into the back of the Denver solid waste truck.

Pretty damn great, right?

Most people who say they are great, aren’t. We are taught to be humble, and humility is an inextricable aspect of greatness. Gandhi and Nelson Mandella and Mother Teresa probably never called themselves great in spite of their own clear greatness. The people I hear bragging about their greatness these days make me vomit in the back of my mouth a little. They espouse their own greatness, and wait in anxious anticipation for the reaction. If they have done a great job of surrounding themselves with ring kissers, the echo chamber erupts with the sound of little air pumps reinflating the great-ones’ egos.

So if I am awe-inspired by great people who don’t call themselves great, and repulsed by mediocres and dipshits who self-laud their own greatness (I would rather smell the empty milk jug section of the Denver recycling center in July), how dare I call myself great?

Good question. It’s a pretty counterintuitive move, but I’m not sure how to make my subtle (but incredibly self-impactful) point without leading with bloviated arrogance. I actually regret it already, but I am going to see if I can bring it around, and then maybe rewrite this paragraph when I am done. Or maybe not.

My own greatness is incredibly important to me, and to the people with whom I interact. To be more precise, my own awareness of my own greatness is quite a lot more important than just my greatness itself. To put it into a regional context that will resonate with the people in a part of the country I just visited, my awareness of my greatness is wicked smart (pronounced smot).

Awareness. That’s a critical concept. I have always, always been keenly aware of my mistakes and failures. I think that’s an ingrained part of the human experience as intended or developed by God or evolution or some combination depending on your own personal belief system. If we are not aware of our mistakes, we will repeat them to our own detriment. Awareness of failure is self-protection. That’s why you can eat a whole bowl of tomato soup with no recollection of 49 of the spoon lifts, but will never forget the one where you caught your chin on the way up and stained your shirt.

How about some awareness of your 98% on-target mouth delivery? It might fall short of perfection, but I certainly call that greatness.

I have become recently fixated on two awarenesses that free me to acknowledge my greatness.

Some months ago a concept that really resonated with me was circling the bowl that is social media. In 150 years, no one will know who I was. My closest then-living relative will be a great-great-grand kid, and no one knows their great-great-grandparents. Even if I leave some literary or social-research legacy, it will be buried under the offerings of those who come after me. Fame only buys you an extra 50 years. Even Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods will be forgotten when our sports stars are playing Quidditch or Madden 174 video games using the chips implanted in their temples. So if in 150 years absolutely none of my contributions, worries, actions or inactions will matter, why the fuck do I let them matter so much to me now? Think about it – 150 years really isn’t that long from now, and there will be no reasonably accessible proof of my existence. I won’t matter, so I don’t matter. Isn’t that wonderful?

The second awareness is that even the most pop-culturally successful among us reportedly long for more time with family on their deathbeds. They don’t ask for their fortunes to be delivered bedside in stacks of million-dollar bills for one last counting. They don’t polish their Super Bowl rings or gold records. They long for more time with people they love. Well, if that’s as true as it seems to be, why not prioritize time and connection now while I am not alarmingly close to my demise?

These two pieces of awareness about human fragility and priority make my self-awareness of my greatness really, really important.

Why would I spend any precious time or effort lamenting occupational setbacks or financial shortcomings? No, life has not worked out as I planned. Not at all. But maybe the failure is that I planned at all, not what plans I chose to make.

My book is not a best seller. Nothing I have written has ever gone viral. I have never won a state championship as a high school soccer coach. My bank doesn’t call me and offer perks of joining their “elite” or “premier” membership.

But every day I wake up surrounded by people I love, and every day I choose to spend my time making the present situation (my situation and their situation) enjoyable.

I haven’t murdered anyone (not even the people who deserve it), and I try really hard at stuff.

The end.

My list of accomplishments has only those two items, and it has earned my self-recognition of internally indisputable greatness.

Worrying about hitting arbitrary targets that no one else currently gives a shit about, and no one in 150 years will even understand – that has no place in my greatness. Greatness comes from letting go, not from gripping tighter. Self-acknowledged greatness comes from feeling safe, not from feeling successful. Self-confirmed greatness happens in a plane that exists above the opinions of others – the haters and the ring-kissers alike.

No one can give me my greatness, but then again, no one can take away my greatness, either.

Self-determined greatness comes with the, well, greatest bonus of all. Self-convinced greatness comes with an indescribable inner peace.

I’m going to keep on not killing anyone and laughing about my soup stains. I’m good with that.

Actually, I’m great.

This essay is from the “Underlying Issues Series.” Just because I have moved past alcohol doesn’t mean I don’t have lots of  room for growth, and lots of underlying issues to explore. If you are down with this blend of authenticity and self deprecation, please subscribe. If you don’t need help finding sobriety, you can ignore all the alcoholism stuff, and just read about my underlying issues that led to the addiction.

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