Wednesday, February 15, 2006

On Greatness; A Conversation between Brothers

My brother likes to ask questions a lot. In fact, he asks so much that it is annoying to me at times. I felt like I am his instant “talking” encyclopedia that he could ask anytime and expects an answer immediately after. There are times however, when he asks a question that is so deep and meaningful that I cannot help but answer it. He did that sometime last week. He was reading an article over the net about the life and works of Augustus Caesar, the first Roman Emperor back then. After reading the article, he asks me that isn’t it unfair to the person who have achieved so much in his lifetime to just be simply “talked” or even “discussed” about in an hour or two or even just a few pages? He went on to elaborate that that great person spent his entire lifetime, shedding blood and sweat, going through agonizing pain, despair, and sorrow, surmounting the unimaginable obstacle and overcoming the overwhelming odds and literally, investing his entire life to accomplish the feat that he is remembered for and what did he get in the end? To be a mere subject of a casual conversation? Somehow it “belittles” his achievements, his life, and his effort. When my brother said that, I fully understand what he was saying. Somehow, it wasn’t enough to be just “talked” about. Great men should deserve our gratitude, our respect, our admiration but they seemed to be short changed. I remembered a poem that exactly captures my brother’s dilemma. It is the preface of the book, “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, written by Lo Kuan Chong in reference to the great battle of the Red Cliff. To loosely translate it, “The violent waves of the gushing great river flows to the East, to a distant land, carrying with it the memories of the legendary past. The waves have erased the footprints of heroes, washed away the bodies of the defeated along with their armors, as well as the victor’s arrows and sword. Nothing is left except for the mountain where the cliff hangs, the silent boulders sit, the quiet tree rest. I wonder if the sunset looks the same as now as it was then? I gazed my sight down on the shore and found a party of fishermen drinking and merry making. In their raucous revelry, they talk about the past, about the great battle that had happened centuries before, about the heroes and the villains, about victors and defeated only to be forgotten when they woke up from their drunken stupor. I cannot help but lament, is this what they worked for (everything they worked for is gone by now)? To be a subject of a drunken debate?” I thought about my reply to my brother’s question for a while and then I asked my brother, how many people have lived or existed in the last thousand years? Billions perhaps. And of the billions that have lived through the ages, only a handful got to be talked about not by one individual or for a couple of years but by many for years after years, centuries after centuries, and generations after generations. Isn’t that fair for what they did, even if their “monument” didn’t survive till now? “Well, yeah.” My brother replied. “But, is it worth it? To stick your neck out only to be criticized, lampooned?” Indeed, there are people who weren’t “there”, who couldn’t understand “why”, and who doesn’t know “what happened” but had the gall to criticize the “one who sticks his neck out” as if he could do any better. It is always easy to know what to do in the past based from hindsight in the future. My reply at that time is, “Well, great men have their admirers and detractors. It’s the price of greatness.” Even so, I somehow am not convinced of my own answer. Is criticism a fair price for greatness? A person is great because he has a “great” responsibility or a “great” task. Bungling the task or a simple mishandling of it would create disaster for multitudes and therefore, great men should accept the criticism thrown against them by posterity. Then again, I remembered these words that is taken from a science fiction novel (Star Trek, The Next Generation, “The Forgotten War”) wherein Captain Jean Luc Picard “assesses” a legendary Starfleet commodore and this is what he said, “There was once a legend and his name was Commodore Lucian Murat. There were things he did that were glorious, things he did that evidenced bravery beyond all expectations of bravery. And there were mistakes that showed just how human he truly was. For within every legend, there cowers a man.” Nothing is more truer said that this! Remove their cloak of invincibility, their aura of greatness; a great man is no different from all of us. However, his virtue, his strength were greatly expanded by a hundred folds and blown out of proportion while his folly, his weakness were magnified a thousand times and all the blame were place on him. It is really quite unfair for they are just like us, human, prone to mistakes but capable of redeeming itself and of doing great deeds. Having convinced myself, I turned to the other statement that my brother said that day and that there are people who weren’t willing to stick their neck out and be “lampooned”. Quite right, there are those who shunned the limelight, who “avoided” greatness and even feared it. The truth is greatness is neither to be sought after nor to work for but it was bestowed upon those worthy of it. The famous phrase of Wen Tien Shiang said it all, “Ren sheng cher ku say wu sez, leo chee tan shin chao han ching.” In my own understanding, this translates to “Since time immemorial, no man has escaped death. Why then bother with the fleeting pleasures of life (power, wealth, influence). Instead, leave a ‘radiant heart’, a clear conscience that one has done its best for his dream, for his principle, for his belief, for what is right, and for humanity to illuminate the pages of history.” Never mind what other said, what is important is what we do. The following day, in between work, I told my brother these words, “Life could be a 10 volume DVD or a few lines that dirty the otherwise clean white sheet of paper, what is your life?” To which, my brother gave a curt reply, “Not even a dot!” That was his answer, what about yours?

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