Greatness and Childhood and Place
I and a teenage son have been listening to a podcast called How to Take Over the World. The host is an LDS brother who does a deep dive into various great men of history and then does a podcast about them. In a nod to the demands of the podcast biz, he then does a little summary for each one of the lessons of their path to greatness. Some of these little lessons are strained, especially if you treat them as lessons on business success, but some of them are quite interesting.
The last two I heard were about Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, and one of the ones on Jesus. The best thing from the Land podcast was Land’s conviction that ‘you are only two weeks from changing your life.’ What he meant by this was that if you could dedicate two solid weeks straight to something, no distractions, decks completely cleared, you could do great work and achieve great skills that otherwise might take years. I have only ever done this once or twice–it worked (for certain levels of greatness). The most interesting insights from the Jesus podcast were Jesus’ conviviality. He liked feasting and dinner parties. And also Jesus’ keen eye. He *noticed* people and the natural world around him.
The implied conceit of the podcast is that greatness is one singular thing and each biography is revealing a little more to you of its secrets. But what strikes me is how little these great men often have in common. The secrets to one guy’s success are the opposite of the secrets of another guy’s success. Here is Edwin Land and team buried in a little warehouse he rented, he’s on one of his two-week sprints, straw-tick mattresses on the concrete floor, literally working until he drops from exhaustion and is dragged over to one of the mattresses…. and here is Jesus, feasting with the publicans and Pharisees.
I have the strong conviction that each one of us has a path to greatness in this life. It may not be the same path as anyone else. Nor is it the same greatness as anyone else. But it is there, and the Spirit beckons you to take it.
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I’m not the only one to say this, people do say this, and when they do its manifest cope for the realities of human inequality and failure. “You aren’t a milkwater loser, you are just differently special!” So I will be clear. I am not saying that ‘everyone is great in their own way.’ Everyone is not great in their own way. Most of us are mediocre. Quite a few of us are comfortably sub-par. I am saying that everyone could be great in their own way, which is a very different thing. Many are called but few are chosen. Nor am I reaching this conclusion based on my strong faith in the doctrines of liberal secular equality. Where this conviction of mine comes from is from reading about–and experiencing!–human greatness in all its bewildering variety. I have a basically spiritual conviction that there are almost infinite kinds of greatness.
It is real to me. I can taste it. I see God poring with delight over each life presented to him like a jewel, and we the craftsmen of these jewels. Most cludgy and barely faceted, but some dazzling bright in the mirk of human existence, glittering in myriad, his own fire reflected back to him. How they shine! And this jewel is not the endstate–it is not what we are aiming for–it is what we are. It is the whole life from birth to death and beyond, that is the precious stone.
If your life doesn’t dazzle, don’t despair. Most gems don’t until they are finished. There is still time for that last tap of the chisel when the fractures all split and the perfect planes of beauty stand revealed. There is still time to work the mar so it it becomes part of the character of the piece. Carve into the mar, carve through the mar, make the jewel your own. Ugliness is just a satanic distortion of highly individualized beauty.
And when I say everyone, I mean everyone, but believing me will require climbing up to a high mountain and having a broader view of the landscape of greatness. It is possible, for instance, to reach greatness in aplomb. Not just a lot of aplomb, not just more than most people, but ineffable aplomb, aplomb so pure it pierces. Calm that is like a lake of holiness. Humor that is a testimony of God. A balance, a sweetness of life, so vivid and deep that it creates a pleasure that is almost pain.
But I think the form of greatness that is the most available to us is greatness in family. I mean this in the conventional sense of greatness. Hasdrubal Barca was a Great Man of History, in and through his Lion’s Brood.
I also mean that the family is the arena for heroic virtues such as dash, elan, courage, and great daring.
But mostly I mean that you can have cozy domesticity that is heroic in its grandeur. Your fathering or mothering can be of the stuff of which mountains move.
I don’t know, but I suspect President Nixon’s father may have been one such. Most of us have fathers who were one such, at least at times. The trick is be one such often enough.
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My mind gnaws at strange questions. Perhaps you have noticed. One of those is nostalgia–I keep trying to figure out what it is and what it is for. It is both pleasant and painful the way happy spiritual things often are, so I believe it to be for good and from God. But why?
I am working on a book about my childhood. Friends who have read chapters say it hits that sense of something golden and something lost very well. The tentative title is the name of the place. When your father and mother achieve some kind of domestic greatness, somehow for a child the sense of it comes out in the landscape. It becomes a land of legend for you. An evil spell has come on the place where I grew up–it has shrunk a lot and has become shabbier. But underneath that spell, I can still feel the legend sleeping.
I had a friend who just went home again–unlike most of us, he has a home to go home to. With permission I am sharing a small extract from what he said.
