The Great Man

What makes a “great” man? Quite similar to my previous topics, but a slightly different question.

For me, I hope and pray that who we are is measured less by how much we stay on the horse, and more by how hard we try to pick ourselves back up when we fall off the horse. Everyone messes up. We all fail sometimes. That’s a given. We weren’t sent to this earth to fail, but to learn, and we learn by falling down and scraping our knees.

I was thinking about this extensively at work yesterday…just the idea of what makes a “great” man. I’ve heard a lot of different definitions from people, and though I can appreciate and understand most of them, I found my explanation and view to be much more simple. What makes a “great” person is the effort he or she puts into life. We all come from different backgrounds and have different experiences, so no one can really be measured on the same plane…we’re different. And we’re supposed to be different. It’s not about how much better I am than my neighbor, but rather how much better I can become than the person I am today.

This is all a bit scatter-brained, I know. But my point is that often we attribute our worth to things that are, in the end, not fairly measured because we’re comparing ourselves to other people. In my opinion, our worth and beauty as a person comes from the effort we put into making our own personal lives more meaningful. The drive we have to face challenges with a positive attitude. The determination we have when we’re at our lowest to get back on our feet and to keep going, no matter how painful or impossible the road. The faith we have that if we do all that we can do, the Lord will make up the rest. The gratitude we have for all of our experiences in life. The ability we have to learn from each fall we take and each scrape we get so that we can turn around and help others through their own journeys in life.

That’s what makes a great man. It doesn’t matter if he’s the 50-year-old CEO of some large corporation or the teen-age retail worker at the local Walmart. We all have the opportunity to show our true colors and we all have the potential. It’s just up to us to choose what happens when we fall off the horse.