water, glass, greatness

Have you seen the movie Dogma? In the movie, there’s a scene where the main character describes faith as a glass of water. When we’re little, the glass isn’t very big, so it’s basically full of water. As we get older however, the glass gets larger but the water doesn’t grow with the glass; it takes a different, separate effort to make the water grow.

This post isn’t about faith, and [unfortunately] it’s not about the movie Dogma [it’s funny, see it if you haven’t].

This post is about greatness, meaning, and leveraging metaphors from movies with characters such Jay, Silent Bob, and the 13^th apostle.

Would a younger you like / respect who & what you’ve become? Is your ‘greatness quotient’ staying strong? By that I mean – do you have aspirations, make efforts to fulfill those aspirations, and consider the time spent in this pursuit to be a meaningful part of your life?

The greatness quotient is like the glass of water. When we are young, we want something, and we go after it. We pursue our needs wholeheartedly and purely. There is lots of water in the glass. As we grow older, the glass gets bigger, but the water slowly evaporates as we shift ourselves from passion to bills, mitigating risk, and weighing the net benefits of something over the long run. Not to be cynical or anything.

One of best ways to maintain happiness in the face of evaporation is calmness and peace of mind. Is that not what we pursue as grow older, and aim for maximum net wellbeing – security, comfort, and peace of mind? “Let the young guns go out and hunt, fight, kill and die for progress – we spent our time in the battlefields; now it’s their turn to drive forward, as it is our turn to sit, and have peace of mind.”

It’s not even a bad thing to lose passion as life makes us change our goals and ambitions; it’s a necessary part of the world. It does include happiness; it does come with peace of mind. However, it’s definitely something that people should notice and be aware of.

Do you remember what it’s like to really need something? Do you remember what it’s like to be so excited about something you can hardly sleep? These are little pieces of passion, glimpses of the thing that turns steal into skyscrapers and makes the fires in the world keep burning. When’s the last time we’ve been in the same room as that feeling?

The greatness quotient does dissipate over time – this stops people from being too risk taking in old age when their bodies can’t take it, and their young need them to stay alive. But don’t let that number get too low.

** time spent in the pursuit of great things / total time spent living = greatness quotient **

Don’t forget to give yourself a chance to be great, to pursue something awesome, and to have a little life amidst the amortization of things, cost-benefit analysis of other things, and the general crap that we all have to do to survive. Make that little kid in there proud.