What prevents us from reaching Greatness?

The answer seems simple: our “littleness” is what prevents us from achieving Greatness.

Most of us are seldom aware of the efforts we make daily to be and remain “small”.

Paradoxically, we have been “programmed” from a very young age to be “little” in Life. Early on we were made to understand that the dream of becoming an “astronaut” was just a game and the idea of ​​exploring and conquering the world corresponded to stories from fairy tales and not from “real life”. Early on we were taught the fundamental importance of “keeping our feet on the ground” and stop dreaming. Early on we were expected to mature as quickly as possible and prepare to face the difficulties of Life. Early, very early, they made us experts in understanding and living “reality”.

This “reality” always had the size of the one experienced by those who educated us: our families in the first place, with the healthy intention of protecting us, then the “medium” in which organizations designed to educate are usually registered. And the “average” always ends up being closer to the “average” than to Greatness.

Many things are contemplated in Greatness, but the most important is, ultimately, the realization of the potential with which each person is born. Just as biology determines how large our bodies will develop as they develop, our human condition sets broad dimensions for all that we can achieve as people. But while we never put limitations on our bodily growth, from very early on they exist for our growth as people.

It is good to wonder, for example, why has nature provided human beings with the ability to Dream. Why have you endowed him with imagination? Is it not appropriate to suppose that they have been given to us so that we can use them profusely? Isn’t it a fact that the world we live in is the product of those who dreamed it before us and made it possible? Is it not sensible to conclude that someone created in his imagination the device with which I am writing these lines today?

Dreams and imagination are not, then, idle processes that distance us from the understanding of “reality”, they are, in any case, elements that allow us to progressively build reality, one that also walks hand in hand with evolution and progress (although it also involves the conception of the atomic bomb or environmental contamination).

I do not dare to determine if all human beings also can “make their dreams come true”, but I am sure that the hypothesis can never be verified if one does not dream first.

Dreaming is the fundamental requirement of Greatness. Everything is possible in dreams, and that possibility is what activates the dynamic that eventually leads to achievements. The technical virtuosos would like to add that there is an important difference between the possible and the probable, but they will always agree that without “possibility”, “probability” does not exist. Certainly, not everyone likely achieves or fulfills their dreams, but it is precisely that walk that qualifies for Greatness. Generally, the person who does not lose his dreams makes extreme efforts to make them come true, or at least walks with his eyes on the horizon, and in this way builds a path for those who accompany him or follow him on the path.

If it is understood (concerning the case) that all human beings are made with the same “raw material”, then nothing of a “structural” nature differentiates us from the Great Men who left their signature on this planet. None of them had a different blood color or brain or biological capacities incomparable to ours. What eventually sets us apart from them is the “functional” aspect: they had, and still have, a different idea of ​​impossibilities and limits.

Limiting yourself is never the same as setting limits. In one case one represses and the other limits. While the latter can be considered rational and practical, the former simply emasculate potentialities. For the person who travels the paths of Greatness, the limits constitute milestones that must be reached progressively and that must then be overcome. Those who limit themselves establish narrow borders that they consciously intend not to violate.

For some, the mountains that are on the way constitute the requirement to start climbing, for others they represent the end of the journey. While the former conceive them as a limit to be overcome, the latter interpret it as a limit for their walk.

There’s a reason these “small” mental programs are so effective: they’re based on the natural human tendency to be Comfort. While many may assume that “security” is privileged, it is just a delicate effort to build a “ comfort zone ” where everything is more predictable, where disappointment and frustration can be avoided.

Greatness has of course a cost, like all things in Life, and this usually manifests itself as disappointment and frustration. But these are costs that are paid for the actions that are taken, not for the life that is lived. The Greatness establishes innumerable disappointments before granting fruit and generates, of course, frustration, however, the “littleness” ends up building a disappointing life and a frustrated existence.

Those who are afraid of disappointment finally make the comfortable decision to limit their actions to what is safe and predictable. Those who are afraid of frustration don’t work hard (or often) to get what they want. Being “small” is comfortable and safe, the child in us knows this and lived under the coverage and care given by his elders. Then, if there is a way to replicate the experience in some way, it constitutes an unquestionable attraction.

It should not be very difficult for everyone to demonstrate that Greatness is a natural condition of all human beings, for this, it would only be necessary to observe the great achievements that the species has achieved, from that condition that kept it in a cave to the present. which allows you to explore worlds outside the solar system; from the sad reality of dying from a simple cold to the possibility of facing terrifying diseases; the transition from cold darkness to heat and light that modern homes enjoy; from sign communication to a fully interconnected world; from a world whose distances devoured the greatest effort to a small one where everything is close and within reach.

Those who built all this were people identical to us, people who, however, never conceived “reality” as a limitation, rather as something that had to be worked on and transformed, people who understood that happiness is found on the road and that peace is only a state that waits at the end of the journey, people who were clear that Life summons fighters or victims and that there is no other category, people who understood that disappointment is something as natural and inevitable as a sneeze and who made frustration a travel companion. Exceptional people, not because of their natural conditions, but rather because of their value. Indomitable dreamers and fertile imagination.

“Brave” people as they describe in my adoptive town are not afraid of hard work and sacrifice, people are aware of destiny and the future (which has so much different from “becoming”). People with healthy ambition (please!), irremediable mavericks, rebels from each of their cells, irreverent, daring, and indomitable, and above all FREE in thought and action. Always FREE!, from prejudice and judgment of others. Because no greater value has been given to the human being than Freedom and there is no Great man and no type of Greatness that does not have its foundation in it.

Greatness is harvested when faith and work have been sown in what is sought. When this seed has been watered with love for oneself, for the tasks, and for the goal. When the harvest is accompanied by humility and gratitude. The Big Man is humble and grateful because he knows the pain of defeat and the sweet relief that comes from coming out of it.

The common man is asked many times to Think big, but for Greatness this is a condition, not a requirement since there are no limits to thought, at least not in the way that flying or staying underwater for a long time is deprived of the human being. What is a small thought? Something like being “half pregnant”?

Theodore Roosevelt described the character of the Big Man well:

“The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is streaked with dust, sweat and blood, who fights valiantly, who fails and falls short time and time again. That he knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends his life for a just cause.”

As parents we have the responsibility to deliver to those who follow us this mental program: the one with unlimited possibilities, the one with dreams that must be pursued. Our children need to know that the world we brought them to is the world of the Da Vinci and the Vernes, of Marco Polo and the Von Braun, of those who looked to the sky not only to ask for the help that surely exists there but also of those who looked at it and shouted that they would soon reach it.

And if we have to talk about “reality” with our little ones, possibly the best thing we can tell them is that “it is up to you to have your feet on the ground, but nothing obliges you to have your head at the level of your feet.”