Maybe a real hero is the last one to hear about it.

James Stewart as Wylie Burp, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

For some reason, this post came to my mind this week. I wrote it almost exactly a year ago. Maybe it’s watching my grandson play basketball, or another grandson play in the yard, or a granddaughter draw a picture for me. These little dreamers who see it all in front of them…even if “all” encompasses just the next moment. Perhaps it’s just a timely reminder.

I Thought I Was Supposed to Be the Great One – March 17, 2024

Berry gets the ball, two seconds on the clock, the shot flies….he scores! Victory! And so it went in my mind. Basketball. Baseball. Football. A soldier. A knight. A firefighter. An astronaut. How many places did my youthful mind find glory?

I can remember spending hours in imaginary basketball, football, or baseball games. With a bit of quiet, I can almost return to them. In the front-yard or under the basketball goal hanging over the garage. In front of the pitch-and-catch net that would return the baseball to me. Football passes thrown to myself, caught over imaginary defensive backs in the endzone. My imagination had no limits nor self-conscience awkwardness over these flights of fantasy. I didn’t need friends over or an iPad, I could step outside and disappear into another world, lost in the possibility of it all.

A recent conversation reminded me of those days when my heart was full of the call to greatness. The fantasies didn’t stop with sports. Plastic machine guns and a green helmet helped transport me to the battlefront, when war looked like a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate my heroism. A wooden sword took me to the middle ages, called to the chivalric duty of the knight saving his fair damsel. Space? Of course! It was the final frontier. A place in which my courage and wits would best the most devious alien.

Whatever the field or call to duty, the result was the same. Allstar Phil, Sir Phillip, or Captain Berry, would somehow win the day. On my more creative days, I might even create my own nickname like “the gazelle” or “the blue knight” – anything that might make it clear just how great this hero was. No good hero would want people to miss the particular genius of his greatness.

Time goes on and those boyish fantasies fade. The reality of our experience comes to bear and most of us never hit that last second shot or win the Superbowl on an amazing catch. We grow to realize that a battlefield is the last place we want our courage tested and walking on the moon is way beyond our heroic aspirations. In the stark light of reality, we finally recognize those boyhood games for what they were, flights of fantasy within reach of only the few truly great among us or visions turned to nightmares in the cold light of experience.

Curiously, the old fantasies fade but new ones take their place. The big boys (and girls) among us begin to dream of great careers solving impossible problems, making crazy money, building unimaginable towers into the sky, curing insidious diseases, inventing the product that dents the universe…maybe even building the company that fixes a dysfunctional healthcare system. Moving beyond knighthood and sports-based superstardom, we see ourselves at the center of a different sort of greatness. A practical greatness that looks a bit more attainable.

Perhaps some of us lose the dream part of that journey. Maybe those fantasies fade in the face of the realities that make it clear to us that whatever we once dreamed is no cakewalk. The delusions of grandeur disappear before the harsh difficulties of a life that includes setbacks, loss, hurt, self-doubt, distraction, and occasional apathy. We grow up and learn that our fantasies don’t put bread on the table and the struggle to exist doesn’t adhere to the dream plan we once imagined.

For others, the dream comes true…at least in some fashion. However, the last second shot disappears in a fleeting instant of greatness. The world-changing product creates painful unintended consequences or that beautiful building we designed, shooting gloriously skyward, only satisfies for a moment, as the race to stay on top becomes a grinding competitive treadmill. The younger, more creative designer appears, and we find ourself lamenting: I thought I was supposed to be the great one. I was the great one.

“Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” We think back to Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1, and wonder about the point of it all. “In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear.” Dante, The Divine Comedy.

It seems that our notion of “greatness” like most of the books, dreams, people, and places of our lives, meets us where we are. Greatness to that little boy so many years ago morphs into something else for the middle-aged man seeing the world through a very different set of lenses.

Our sixth grandchild was born yesterday. Alexander Roy enters this life with a blank slate and literally everything before him. With great expectations, we welcome him. With great love we embrace him. I wonder, what will greatness look like to him and how will that change as he encounters the path of his own life?

Wrestling with my other grandchildren last night, I was humbly reminded that my life is not about me. There is a true grounding that occurs amid snotty noses wiped across one’s shirt, the indignities heaped upon one’s person in the midst of a dogpile, and the delightful necessity of losing in order to see the thrill of victory at your expense in a race across the yard. Suddenly, greatness becomes something that is given away and nowhere near the center I once dreamed.

Perhaps the struggles of life aren’t so much a conspiracy to strip that greatness to which we once aspired, but a formation of the selfless humility that inspires greatness in those around us. Perhaps, that’s where we begin to find lasting joy.