I'm good and searching for greatness

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This picture has nothing to do with this post :)


How many times have you said or thought, "things were so much better back in the day"?  The flood of memory and images making your mind race through the photo album of your life, back to a time you remember fondly from your decades of existence.  I do this a lot. 

 

Since I have been a bit introspective as of late, I was thinking about when I was personally great.  Before I get into that though, I was thinking that the entire idea of being great is relative or objective.  In fact, to me the idea of greatness or perfection is not something that ever happens, but rather something you strive for and never achieve.  What may have felt great to me might not have been so great for those around me.  The thing about looking backwards is that you tend to perceive the past only through the lens of your personal experience and it is hard to take off your personal bias lenses and look at the past in a manner as to how others were experiencing that same time line. 

 

Hell, think about how hard it is for us to understand the feelings of others.  Empathy is not humanity's strongest trait.  Compound that lack of empathy with nostalgia and you have a recipe for "back in my day" cake.  Oh, and we have all had, and given up, a slice of "back in my day" cake.  Regardless of the situation we all have the snack at the ready.  Your child says their bored?  Back in my day...  Your younger co-worker discusses their hectic life?  Back in my day...  Cost of eggs go up a dollar?  Back in my day... 

 

You see with retrospection, I'd even go so far as to say that we rarely think about the experience of everyone or anyone else unless that retrospection is concerning someone specific where you may have regrets or concerns.  When we reminisce about the past, we generally assume everyone around us was feeling the same thing as us.  That is what I find interesting about retrospection, most of us don't dwell in the negative within our past, we enjoy thinking of the past as a better time.  I am pretty sure I have discussed this before, but in my experience I hear people discuss times when they had limited responsibility.   

 

So, I have started to honestly think about my life with the goal to find greatness.   When was I great.  Again, understanding that greatness is relative and considering the fact that I am no spring chicken, I have a lot of moments and time periods to evaluate as to when things were great.  However, I am not just searching for when things overall were great, but when I was great as well. 

 

This is how my Make Me Great Again project has begun.  I will be searching my brain for when I was great and I will try to remember what the world was truly like around me and whether it was great for everyone else.  Oh, and if you are wondering how to pronounce MMGA, think Mr. Mackey from South Park (Mmmm... kay) - in this case  Mmmm... Ga as in I'm good. 

 

As a side note: Why type it all out here?  I can't stop my head from doing this and if I don't get it out it just spins around in there.  So, I thought I might just let my fingers spill it out on the keyboard.  Diarrhea of the fingers if you will...  I had a 6th grade teacher (Mrs. Hancock) tell my parents I had diarrhea of the mouth (I talked to much).  I have this nervous social thing, I'll talk about that a later time.   

 

For now, I'm good... (mmga) 

 

  - JJ 

 

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