Greatness is a breeze

As I tried to live through the New Orleans Saints last football game with blood pressure and stomach still intact, I heard an announcer say something akin to "I've never known a player who wants to be great as much as Drew Brees."

The announcer, former Super Bowl winning quarterback Troy Aikman, said it wasn't a matter of Brees having a chip on his shoulder because of his short stature, it wasn't a matter of him being like most players who talk about greatness. It is a matter of course for Brees, who trains that way, works that way, plays that way, imagines himself that way, forces passes into tight holes that way and so on.

He wants to be great. Not good. Not remembered. Great.

This week Brees was named Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated, an award for his work on the field and off. I thought about what Aikman had said, and I marveled at Brees' humble reaction.

Can one be humble and great?

Apparently one can.

This whole notion of greatness has always interested me. I would love to be great at something, but there was always things that got in the way. Like, I wasn't...great at anything I mean. That really got in the way of my longing for greatness.

I was never interested in merely living my life and dying, leaving nothing behind. I had bigger goals. But the fact that I wasn't great at anything pestered me in my efforts to be great. If it hadn't been for the fact I wasn't great, I might have been great.

I worked extremely hard to be great in baseball. I really did. I did the picturing in my mind stuff. I practiced ... hard, long, often. But that whole hitting and catching and throwing and running thing wasnt especially in my corner. On my best days, I wasn't good even.

I wanted to be a great writer. I'm not. There are literally a million writers in this country right now better than me. I can express myself better than a few million writers living and gone. But I will never be great. I had one book published and the total of its readership was surpassed by Sarah Palin's readers of last Tuesday. Sarah Palin? I've written three or four more books and one more will be published. I have 17 followers of this blog. Seventeen.

I would love to be a great musician, but that whole talent thing was too much. I didn't mind working at it, but my voice and my ability to play were hampered by voice and my ability to play.

And that was all I could possibly be great at. No politics. No hobbies. Nothing else. The greatness pool is quiet. I've not jumped in lately (or ever).

It seems to me that those who are great, at whatever they are great at, are those persons who are willing to take enormous risks, those who are willing to put in enormous time and energy and sacrifice, and those who are willing to fail. Mark Twain said, "Be good and you will be lonely." Those out there set apart from others are those out there set apart from others, it seems. Harry Gray said, "No one ever achieved greatness by playing it safe." Though the fact I have no idea who Harry Gray was means he must have played it safe fairly often.

I'm not very good at being willing to fail, though I do...often. I hated losing more than I loved winning, thus I'm not a happy risk taker, being more joyous over the thought of winning and always counting the cost of losing as I contemplate doing whatever. Sacrifice? Not so much.

What, then, is greatness? Someone once said that greatness is what good people do on their worst days. In other words, it's reaching deep within toward those dreams we had as children even as we get old and those dreams seem so far gone.

These musings will never reach a multitude, in other words. That's okay. With God's blessings, they will reach the one who needs to read them that particular day. Would that mean greatness? No. That would mean leaving to God what is God's.

Will I ever smell greatness, as Brees yelled into his teammates' faces before each game last season in New Orleans?

Nah. But I've come to understand that it is better to know His greatness than be great on my own.

A Psalmist, a rather well-remembered writer whose name we don't even know, wrote, "Your beauty and splendor have everyone talking; I compose songs on your wonders. Your marvelous doings are headline news; I could write a book full of the details of your greatness. The fame of your goodness spreads across the country; your righteousness is on everyone's lips."

He's talking about God, and only God. He/she is the real keeper and decider of greatness. Want to know greatness? Look up.

I wanted to be great, but I will more than settle for being His. That's a long, hard-earned lesson.