Being Great: Are We Really Just Scared?

This is going to be a quick post, but hopefully still thought-provoking.

Some of you may have heard of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He wrote many essays, the most famous of which is “Self Reliance.” In his essay, he basically tells the reader than people need to depend on themselves. They need to be confident, but not cocky, and respect themselves. If you don’t respect yourself, how can you expect others to?

The most famous statement in the essay is “To be great is to be misunderstood.” When you first hear it, you probably thinking “okay, sounds cool, whatever.” Don’t dismiss it yet! Do you even understand what it means? I had to write a paper analyzing this for school, and at first, I came up with the stupid generic response: the greater someone is, the fewer people there are like them. The fewer people that think the way they do. Therefore, they’re misunderstood.

Wasn’t that just so enlightening?

Here’s another way of thinking about it: if one thinks about all the “geniuses” in history, it appears that all of them were misunderstood (Einstein, Newton, Jesus, Columbus, etc.). Why is that? It certainly has something to do with their thinking being far above others, but also, “to be great” almost by definition is to be strange. People who are considered great pushed the boundaries of their society. They tried new things. They looked at things in new ways. Anyone who is great will be misunderstood, because to be great, one must challenge the common thinking.

I would like to be great. Wouldn’t you? But who wants to be misunderstood? I think that’s what holds a lot of people back: the fear of being misunderstood. When you think outside the box, you’re usually labeled “weird”. Maybe that’s why today’s young people don’t do as many great things as we could.

Yeah; ’cause we’re SCARED.

So, I challenge you. Think outside the box. Challenge common thinking. Be misunderstood.

Be great.