The Price of Greatness Is Responsibility
THE PRICE OF GREATNESS IS RESPONSIBILITY
Greatness is living your life with clear purpose and passion, overcoming all obstacles in pursuit of your vision, and great people have always been around, in every era, to inspire the ordinary. But what comes with greatness, is not only fame or wealth, but a colossal amount of responsibility. The responsibility of one’s actions. Abraham Lincoln, in 1861 could easily declare war against Britain because of the Trent Affair, but to avoid another pointless war in the American history, he resolved the issue in a non-violent manner. In his first few days in office, President Barack Obama issued executive orders and presidential memoranda directing the U.S. military to develop plans to withdraw troops from Iraq, while he could have let the US military continue devastating that part of the world on the basis of false allegations made by the previous senator.
Our public figures are not only well known, but admired and loved. However, with their fame and greatness come great expectations from us, the public. Under their seemingly exotic outer shell and fame, they are simply ordinary people like the common man on the street. Even in literature, public figures are faces with expectations of being perfect. For example, in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Atticus Finch is a well-known local lawyer. He has an overall good reputation, and he is a very learned man; however, one day, he chooses to defend a black man in a case against a white man. The black man is convicted of raping the white man's daughter, and even though all charges are faced towards the white man lying, the black man is proven guilty. Atticus Finch receives a lot of hatred for his decision to face someone who is unlike him, and his children also hear a lot from the citizens of their town. The citizens of his town always thought of him as someone who they could look up to, but when he defies their initial trust with something that they could not even imagine,
Greatness is living your life with clear purpose and passion, overcoming all obstacles in pursuit of your vision, and great people have always been around, in every era, to inspire the ordinary. But what comes with greatness, is not only fame or wealth, but a colossal amount of responsibility. The responsibility of one’s actions. Abraham Lincoln, in 1861 could easily declare war against Britain because of the Trent Affair, but to avoid another pointless war in the American history, he resolved the issue in a non-violent manner. In his first few days in office, President Barack Obama issued executive orders and presidential memoranda directing the U.S. military to develop plans to withdraw troops from Iraq, while he could have let the US military continue devastating that part of the world on the basis of false allegations made by the previous senator.
Our public figures are not only well known, but admired and loved. However, with their fame and greatness come great expectations from us, the public. Under their seemingly exotic outer shell and fame, they are simply ordinary people like the common man on the street. Even in literature, public figures are faces with expectations of being perfect. For example, in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Atticus Finch is a well-known local lawyer. He has an overall good reputation, and he is a very learned man; however, one day, he chooses to defend a black man in a case against a white man. The black man is convicted of raping the white man's daughter, and even though all charges are faced towards the white man lying, the black man is proven guilty. Atticus Finch receives a lot of hatred for his decision to face someone who is unlike him, and his children also hear a lot from the citizens of their town. The citizens of his town always thought of him as someone who they could look up to, but when he defies their initial trust with something that they could not even imagine,