The common pattern for improvement, for self or society follows an incremental route – little by little we learn, add, absorb, apply, live, love, and function. Only a few persons have the inner drive, perceptions, skills, brain waves, energy, that vault them forward in large chunks. Only a few can absorb in short spans, gobs of whatever is needed to advance the intellect, discoveries, contexts of life, nature and growth. They are so few in number, and sometimes so remote from daily life and society that they must function on the margins of social and personal parameters. They often seem so beyond the norm degree that they will not make the impact they might hope to make, an impact that may not be useful to the masses in the time/space of a genius (highly gifted). They may give up, and settle for something less than their talents might permit. (The person making the highest mark in a test of genius in the twentieth century spends her time in writing a peripheral short question and answer column in contracted papers.) In some instances these persons are cornered or limited, either by their own choices, or by society. (Orson Welles, as a young man, produced the most talked about scene in radio in War of the Worlds, and what is sometimes touted the greatest film ever to emerge from Hollywood, in Citizen Kane, spent the last decades of his life an excessively obese man, seldom working, spending most evenings with a few friends and bottles of fine wines.) These special persons are sometimes too difficult to get along with. There may be isolation, self-imposed, to a cabin in nature, even suicide. Mysteriously, some lose the gifts they once had, even as they seek preservation and hope for previous accomplishment. They may become sophisticated grumps or great contributors.
There is balance to life, and rhythm. Persons who give time to relationships, will enter vows of marriage or friendship that will last. Last, that is, if they continue in the daily context of life that builds, perhaps corrects, on commitments past. One of the most damning of modern factors in our lives is the belief that one can have it all. Our imaginations may go well ahead of our talents, time and resources. That is good, if harnessed along the way to reality, and suggests heaven, but some persons feeling made for more than earth, want it all in mortality. Human imagination holds motivation, so we may stretch too far believing we can avoid wounding ourselves. I do not consider myself to have been great, but I well know that I have experienced more, much more, than would have been the results if I had not committed myself: to God; to a standard system of intelligent choices; to paying dues in beneficial work; to a belief in service to others; to a realistic understanding of mankind and nature; to a belief that we are at our best in a system that guides us in methods of problem solving; and, to relate to others who, in adequate degree, share in the sense of values, of meaning and moral way of life. The context began with my relationships in family with the education of experience and parental nurture, then in formal education coupled with practice to gain independence, responsibility, learning, and application that gave meaning to self-responsibility. Out of this, one gains not only comfort to follow a humble life of modest achievement, and to be a mentor to others, especially to members of one’s family who invite participation, but to any persons with whom that one has to do who also invite participation. This all fits in the belief that God helps me in my human progress.
Any person (as a student of reality) who, to become mature and to be aware of his/her own meaning for life, will apply the above, and leave the harvest of life to God, will enter the end period of life with a feeling (conviction) of satisfaction. It fits so fully with the concept that life is a transition from generativity, to creativity, to award for following the plan of God for work and relationships. I sense all this in the manner in which Christ worked, and the consequent approach made by the Apostles. The concepts of the Apostles, and the traditional reports of their activities, suggest that the everyday life of persons is completed properly in doing what each person finds to do. Our value is not found in earth’s achievements, but in the personal quality of our lives. To have been the president of something, the celebrity of a field, the leader of the masses may mean very little to God, even when he assists in carrying through the context, but is found in the righteousness of the person – integrity, service to others, and personal faith. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020