Greatness
The great mathematician and scientist Albert Einstein once said that everything is relative. Greatness is also a relative term that is judged based on an individual’s understanding of the masterpiece. This means that judging greatness is a completely personal matter. While one person believes they are seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, or feeling a masterpiece, the next person may deem it a failure.
A few years ago, I recall watching the news and seeing a painting of nothing but a simply drawn elephant holding a flower in its trunk. At first, I was unimpressed and wondered why the news anchors found the painting such a big deal. This was until I found out who the artist was. The painting was done by an Asian elephant holding a paintbrush in its trunk. Instantly my perception of the painting changed from amateurish to a priceless work of art. It wasn’t until after I had fully learned the background of the picture that I recognized its greatness.
This process of understanding and recognizing greatness is a daily occurrence for mankind. When you were young, it is likely that one day you brought home from school a picture that you drew to show your mom. What may have looked like a dreadful drawing of a purple cat with three legs, four eyes, and no tail was likely a beautiful creation that your mother taped to the refrigerator for the next month. Why? Because unlike most, your mom understood what levels you had reached at that point and knew that for you, that picture was quite an achievement relative to last week’s “penguin”.
It is not uncommon that undesirable circumstances can also appear great. At the end of the movie Aladdin, the evil sorcerer Jafar asks Genie to turn him into a genie so that he can be the most powerful ruler of the world. What seemed like a great idea turned into a disaster when he learned that by being a genie, he had to stay confined in a magic lamp until somebody rubbed it to let him out. I experienced this same disappointment around the time the movie Avatar came out. The previews looked great, the reviews were great, and I expected it to be great up until the point that I actually saw it. Needless to say, I was thoroughly let down.
There is not one person on earth that can decide for everyone what is great or not. To do so, they would have to gain knowledge on every subject to understand the story and complexity behind every creation, which is indeed, impossible. We are all free to judge whether or not we believe something is great, but we must always remember to ask ourselves if we have sufficient knowledge relative to the masterpiece.
You had a lot of awesome thoughts in this blog. You took a unique perspective about how whether it's great or not is really based on the audience. It's totally true. I've watched a movie and wanted to be sick before, while everyone else thought it was hilarious. (Shrek 3, specifically.)
ReplyDeleteI agree with David in that you do have some great ideas that are being expressed in the piece; however I think you can dig deeper and add more to this for your audience, but if you don’t want to that’s ok it’s still a good paper.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that greatness is relative, but what do YOU think is greatness?
ReplyDeleteHey! I thoroughly enjoyed all of the examples you wrote about and reading what you wrote! :) I'm sure everyone can relate or understand at least one if not all of your examples! One suggestion, I felt like there was a lot of great but still slightly different examples in the third paragraph, maybe split it into two paragraphs? Awesome paper! :)
ReplyDeleteI like your view of greatness that you expressed throughout the paper. I agree that it is up to our personal opinion what greatness was. It got me thinking what I thought greatness was, and gave me some good ideas for my paper! It was very well written and I think to go any deeper would make it too long unless you chose just one aspect. Awesome for a 300 word article though!
ReplyDeleteWow, we must be at BYU; we have a reference to a Disney movie. But it was used effectively and created meaning--a requirement for all examples.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked some more original takes on greatness; I felt like I'd heard some of that before. What helps me keep things fresh when I write is to ask myself:
What is your personal twist on the subject of greatness? Why is what you have to say particularly interesting? Why should anyone listen?
If you can come up with answers to those questions, your writing will "pop" and people will remember what you wrote about.