Greatness from a distance

Is there really such a thing as greatness? We marvel at our heroes all the time. During the world cup we cheer on the likes of Wayne Rooney and Lionel Messi. Even John Terry gets a few cheers. It is not just football where we have idols; people have idols that are actors, others that are scientists or psychologists. Great thinkers of the past, Nobel prize winners and even our Mothers and Fathers. What is it about these people that we idolise?

Sure they have great talents, but talent is learned. We may, in that case, be in awe of their work ethic or their perceived luck. What I can almost guarantee is that the people that are very close to them and are similar in age cannot see what all the fuss is about.

We do not know much about our idols in this age of PR companies, brand identity and kiss and tells. We only know what people want us to know or what is deemed newsworthy. Granted, the bigger star you are the more un-newsworthy things become newsworthy, anyone barring Beckham getting a haircut would not be on the front page.

Montaigne, who is fast becoming an idol of mine, best sums up this idea in his collection of essays:

‘A man may appear to the world as a marvel: yet his wife and his manservant see nothing remarkable about him. Few men have been wonders to their families’

He is basically saying that from a distance these people may seem wondourous, but ask John Terry’s wife if she sees him as a marvel I am sure she wouldn’t. Terry’s (or Gerrard’s, or even Beckham’s) wife is close enough to John Terry to see that he is not much different from other men his age. He may have an average sized penis, she will hear him on the toilet and see his nasty side once in a while.

This can also be said for beauty, something that I have touched on in a previous blog post. No matter how beautiful you think a girl is, there is somewhere, a bloke bored of fucking her. This is for the same reasons, from afar we can only see the good parts, we haven’t experienced her nagging us to do the dishes or listened to her tales of Jenny from accounts that she thinks we are interested in.

The more we get to know somebody, the less great we find him or her. This is nothing new, we have clichéd sayings like ‘Never meet your heroes, you will be disappointed’ that have stemmed from this idea.

This is where a great deal of unhappiness in our human lives stems. We know ourselves better than anyone else we know. We see others as better than us because we cannot see their true identity, only the one that they project. We should take solace in this fact and you never know, we may become a happier species.