Greatness doesn’t come from birth

There is a saying to talk about great people through the ages “something is in the water” as a justification of what people are good or virtuoso in something specific. But we lose focus on the years of training and doing things to work, until they are a second nature to them (habit). 

If we think of great figures in history we can appreciate in ancient civilizations: Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Greece, Rome. In the Middle Ages we can see greatness in science and faith called saints who were commited to explain nature through God’s eyes; in the Renaissance great artists and genius gathered to show their talent in the knowledge of human nature and perfection. Then came the challenge of civil rights and the fight of a sense on being human: rationality was the scale of humanity and science becomes the way to achieve greatness. After the technology and science became the horizon, the need for conquest and power became a way to gretaness where generals and dictators became the way to change politics through war and money. 

Now we have human rights, globalization, information everywhere we go, we have all the benefits of great people battled for, and we only want to be recognized and loved by others, social media seems like a cry for acceptance by doing extraordinary things, showing wit, being funny, extravagant or talented. All this aspire a perfection that real life doesn’t have, because we all have the same capacities to be extraordinary, but we need to conquer it. 

Hammurabi, Nefertiti, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Atila, Cleopatra, Hanibal, Cesar, Saint Augustine, Bach, Saint Thomas Aquinas, DaVinci, Michaelangelo, Galileo, Newton, Kant,  Schubert, Curie, Napoleon, Churchill, etc. They all have to fight to be great, they weren’t born with talent, they simply work for their virtues (and vices) all their lives.  

What is your greatest virtue to achieve greatness?