THE CHARACTER OF GREATNESS

Greatness is being what you were intended to be before any monetary thing existed. Greatness has little to do with a six or seven figure salary, the kind of car you drive, or the name brand clothing you may be wearing. I knew many people who have acquired such things but I would not leave my most prized possessions in their hands; which are my children nor would I invite them in my community. Monetary things are just one of the many byproducts of greatness, yet it’s not the greatness byproduct.

Remember when I said, “Greatness is being what you were intended to be before any monetary thing existed.” The measurement of true greatness is mothers and fathers who are intricately and lovingly involved in the lives of their children. It is a person who has convictions and a moral compass towards humanity, and who teach their children and the children of others to do the same. How come the man or woman who makes thirty thousand dollars a year or less, who holds down a job and goes to work every day, is a moral outstanding example in their community, who drive an average car or doesn’t drive at all; how come they don’t get the MVP for being great? But we point the finger at them and villainize them for being average on a monetary level but above average on a moral character level. And we wonder why it seems as though we have this new generation who possesses a lot of cash but very little character. It was because of an insignificant seed that a great fruit tree came to be, and without that seed, there will be no greatness only a barren unfruitful land.

Believe me, I get it when we talk about going from rags to riches, being owners of our own businesses, and economic independence. There is definitely nothing wrong with these things but let us not get them confused with greatness. When you’re no longer here who will be the beneficiary of what you worked so hard to build? What kind of character will they have? It is not that we need more mothers and fathers with a bunch of cash we just need them to have a great moral and ethical character. Cash has never built great communities nor has it ever raised well rounded exceptional children. Money has done more to destroy our communities and our children than it has in helping to build them; because it was put in the hands of people with not so good character. But a great character has built great communities with less money. The abundance of people in our communities who have bad character is the reason why our community is failing. I am not just talking about the obvious like the drug dealers; but I talking about the community leaders, politicians, social and religious leaders, and “empowerment leaders”. They sucking our communities dry. They are on every corner selling nickel and dime bags of hope, and as the community become high on the euphoric ecstasy of hope, they rob them blind or sell the community out to the highest bidder. Bad character is like having a good bag of crack, and for those who grew up in the 80’s you saw what that did to our communities. This is not representative of all our leaders, but enough of them to negatively impact our community and stall us from progressiveness.

So, in closing I leave you with this; when it’s all said, and done it comes down to our mindset and the mindset we pass down to our children. In order for us to be truly transformed we must first have a renewing of the mind.

Truely "Our destiny was not written for us, but by us."~Barack Obama

But we must first prioritize what is truly important, even if what is truly important doesn’t have the same glitter as what is not.