I wanted to be Mount Everest. I found out I was an apple. Let me explain.
If someone were to write a book about my life no one would read it. To be honest, I don’t think I would read it either. I am not main character material. I don’t think I am even supporting character material. I have never done anything that most people would consider truly impactfull or daring. I am not famous or associated with anyone famous. As far as looks go, I have been blessed with a commonness that acts as a sort of social camouflage. In short, my life will never be viewed by the whole of society as being extraordinary.
I struggled with this idea for a long time. I had the misconception that if your life were truly great then society would recognize it. On more than one occasion I set out to become “great”. I even came up with a list of ten things that, if I did them, would thrust me into greatness. (I only finished one.) I viewed life like a giant pyramid scheme. I either had to influence a small group of people so greatly that they would follow in my footsteps, and the pattern would continue or I had to influence thousands of people in a small way thereby creating a great effect cumulatively. Looking back I realize how contorted my perception of life was.
Do you know what the largest mountain in the world is? If you were to say Mount Everest you would be wrong. Mount Everest’s peak is higher that any mountain in the world, but from base to peak Mauna Kea over 4,000 feet taller. Why don’t we know this? We don’t know this because two thirds of Mauna Kea is under the ocean and what we cannot see we do not care about. Society today is consumed by what we can see. We admire athletes because we can track exactly how successful they are with statistics. We love movie stars because we have proof of how amazing they are based on box office sales. It’s too hard to look up to the guy who feeds the homeless everyday because there is not an iPhone app to show us the effect he is having. We want heroes with accessible updates. I thought the validation from society would be proof of being great. I just wanted to make a difference. I was not willing to accept that even if the biggest part of me always remained hidden I could still do that. Then one day I read a book that helped me understand how wrong I was.
In the book A Brief History of Eternity, Roy Peacock explains how scientific laws have changed throughout history. Today we know that everything that has mass has an electromagnetic field and that field draws things to it. Even objects millions of light years away are affected by the pull of Earth in a minute way and vice versa. In 1686 Isaac Newton discovered gravity with the, now famous, apple falling to the Earth incident, but he had it a little bit wrong. Newton believed that the Earth pulled the apple towards it and that’s why it fell. Scientists now know that “falling” is an illusion and that both the apple and the Earth are actually pulling each other to each other. Because the Earth’s mass is so much greater the effect it has on the apple is much greater. This side of “the pull” is much more visible so it looks as if it just pulls the apple to it. But on an atomic level the apple actually pulls the Earth up to it at the same time.
It’s hard to believe that something as small as an apple could move the Earth, but the same principal holds true with everything in the Universe. That means that no matter what people see when they look at me I still have the power to move the greatest things. I am an apple. Just an apple. But apples have more power than I thought.
Now, more than ever, I want to make a difference. I want to make the world a better place. I am not deceived by thinking that I am greater than anybody else walking this Earth, but I have finally shed the weight of finding my worth from how others view me. Everyone has greatness in them. For a few blessed people it seems to shine bright at all times. For the rest of us it comes and goes. What if we learned to recognize it? What if we fight to capture it from others and ourselves when it comes? It would allow us to remember what is deep inside us on the days when we do not feel like we are shining. Sometimes those are the days when we make the most difference. Remember that even the apple has to fall to move the world.
