MANY brilliant great leaders, artists and innovators in history were nobodies, who even had no drive to succeed and were even reluctant to step into the limelight, but were mostly forced into circumstances by accident.
• Defining moments, carpe diem. However, despite their initial reluctance, fear and procrastination, they reached their defining moments and made crucial decisions that changed history and made them great.
All their negativities seem to have been erased from history, after all, what matters most are their historic decisions. Unfortunately, by playing them up as superheroes and superhumans, we make them larger than life, and their actions seemingly hard to follow.
However, author Adam Grant in his book Originals cited contrary insights about some of these great men. He noted that, although these men had natural talent and latent leadership, it took the people around them, some their followers and peers, who cajoled and pushed them into those crucial actions.
The majority would ignore these little trivial details, but Grant took notice of them as significant, probably to highlight the fact our heroes are just ordinary people, like you and me. They simply seized the moment and seized the day (carpe diem), at their tipping points and defining moments.
• American revolution’s reluctant trigger. Citing Pulitzer-winning historian Jack Rakove’s account, Grant noted that although it is said “the American revolution was inevitable, it nearly didn’t happen due to the reluctance of key revolutionaries.”
George Washington alone was contented with his life running his “wheat, flour, fishing and horse-breeding business,” but was forced to lead the revolution after John Adams pushed him to head the army. Washington later wrote: “I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it.”
John Adams himself was reluctant to join the cause as he feared British retaliation on his budding law career, but he finally acceded after he was pushed and elected to the First Continental Congress. And when the army was created by Congress, which meant raising arms with Washington in command, there was no other choice but to trigger the start of the 1776 American revolution.
• Earth revolves around sun for 22 years? Even when Nicolaus Copernicus discovered that the Earth actually revolves around the sun, contrary to the common belief then that the sun and other heavenly bodies revolved around us, he kept silent for 22 years, fearing rejection and ridicule.
Grant’s book noted that Copernicus only circulated his “controversial” magnum opus or findings to close friends, but eventually reached a cardinal, who encouraged him to publish his works. And yet, he still stalled for another four years. It took the initiative of a young mathematics professor, who unilaterally brought his works for publication, and
the rest is history.
So, for 22 years, while Copernicus and his few believers were already enlightened with this new knowledge, most people were still in the dark with their geocentric perception of the world.
• King of black freedom. Martin Luther King Jr. was also the reluctant civil-rights movement leader as all he dreamed of was be a pastor and college president. But King’s simple dreams led him to bigger, more noble dreams for humankind in his 1963 iconic powerful “I have a Dream” speech that changed American social history.
Early on, the Black movement was already building up ever since Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus front seat to the whites in 1955. King was elected president of an association to launch a bus boycott, and one led to the other. Three weeks before his powerful speech, King and his wife agreed to assume lesser roles, as he just finished his thesis and wanted to spend more time with church work.
King later admitted: “I became possessed by fear.” He was hesitant to lead the boycott, more so deliver a speech, but gave in when told he will only deliver the closing remarks in the march to Washington.
Almost instantly, he overcame his trepidation when he started delivering his powerful speech in a thundering voice. That speech united the country toward change for freedom and equal rights for all, regardless of skin color, class, culture, etc.
• Leap of faith and fate of leap? There are many more examples of ordinary people doing extraordinary things that made them great, notwithstanding their hesitation, fear and procrastination, but there are some things common to them.
Despite being mere ordinary mortals, they did something extraordinary because they were the right people, at the right time, and the right place, when they finally embraced and made those right decisions, which were momentary leaps of faith and defining moments.
And equally significant probably is the fact that their historic leap was fate or destiny in the making. Internally, they probably did not have the resolve and conviction, but at the tipping point in history, there was nobody else but them and so they were pushed by other people and by historical circumstances.
Apart from faith and fate, it could be feet or the foot that forced people into action, which leads me to a tale of a cruel king, who at one-time challenged his subjects to swim across his pool of crocodiles and sharks with the promise to give half his kingdom and the princess as rewards. One fellow made it, but after getting through, he yelled, “Who kicked me in the butt?” Sadly, one can no longer make ifs or buts at those defining moments.
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com.