Dare to be Great

woman, Coast of Skopelos, Greece, greek islands

I was walking down a street in Georgetown the other day and heard a woman make a comment about me to the friend at her side. The comment concerned something I’ve always considered to be quite normal about myself, but apparently the women had an altogether different idea of what constituted normal.

The comment didn’t bother me, but it got me to thinking about how homogeneous society has become and how little tolerance there is for quirks and peccadillos of personality or style.

I’ve always been fascinated by people with outlandish eccentricities who dare to be themselves. Somehow the true self always rises to the surface like oil in water, and the challenge lies in not burying it to put on an acceptable face for the world.

Although our society prides itself on so-called individuality, it is very suspect of people who do not conform to the manner in which a certain majority has decided is the proper way to look, act, dress, behave and live. There was much more leeway given to individuality in the past than there is today. Consider these people, who were allowed to forge their own paths:

Diogenes of Sinope:

One of the founders of Cynicism and a philosopher of ancient Greece who believed that most humans lived artificial, hypocritical lives. He practiced a life of severe austerity and lived in a tub in the middle of Athens. He walked the streets with a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for one honest man. When a ship he was voyaging on was attacked by pirates, he was taken to Crete to be sold as a slave. As he stood on the auction block waiting to be sold, he pointed to a man in the crowd and said, “Sell me to that man, he looks like he needs a master.”

Despite living the life of a penniless beggar, Diogenes earned the respect of many people. When his tub was destroyed by young hooligans, the city of Athens bought him a new tub and had the delinquents flogged. Alexander the Great paid him a special visit in Athens and said, “If I could not be Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.” And when he died, the city of Corinth (where he had been sold as a slave), erected a monument in Diogenes’ honor.

Nikola Tesla:

One of the greatest genius minds of all time and the father of electricity had a whole host of quirks. In his own words: ”I had a violent aversion against the earrings of women, but other ornaments, such as bracelets, pleased me more or less according to design. The sight of a pearl would almost give me a fit but I was fascinated with the glitter of crystals or objects with sharp edges and plane surfaces. I would not touch the hair of other people except, perhaps, at the point of a revolver. I would get a fever by looking at a peach…I counted the steps in my walks and calculated the cubical contents of my soup plates–otherwise my meal was unenjoyable. All repeated acts or operations I performed had to be divisible by three and if I missed I felt impelled to do it all over again even if it took hours.”

Tesla felt that remaining celibate was crucial to his work.

St. Simeon Stylites:

A christian ascetic who spent 37 years living at the top of a pillar that stood 50 ft. high and had a 3 sq.ft platform at the top. He entered a monastery at the age of 16 but his own personal brand of austerity was so severe, he was actually asked to leave the monastery. A few years later, in order to get away from all the people who were coming to him for prayers and advice, he found a home for himself at the top of a pillar among some ruins in modern-day Syria. He lived on the pillar through 37 hot summers and brutal winters, and never descended. People down below would send him food and water via a basket and rope, but St. Simeon never formally requested anything. The Byzantine Emperor Theodosius and his wife Eudocia greatly respected Simeon and came to him for counsel.

ancient greek pillar, column, temple of the athenian zeus, athens, greeceGreek ruin

Today, Diogenes would be looked upon as a lazy beggar, Nikola Tesla would be medicated for obsessive compulsive disorder, and Simeon…well he would probably be accused of pulling the pole sitting stunt in order to get his own reality show. All because they asserted their individuality and dared to truly be themselves…the greatest thing they could be.

They make the little things seem alright. Like quitting your job because you know its wrong for you, or avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk as you walk down the street because you still think it might break your mother’s back, or pulling away from the world for a while because you’ve set your sights on other things.

I ran into a group of friends in Dupont Circle a while back and told them about an amazing man I’d encountered down the street. The man was homeless and shouting one of the most profound diatribes I’d ever heard directed at the world. ”I’d rather be hated for who I am”, he spat at the world, “than loved for who I am not!”

When I finished telling them that it was one of the most intelligent displays of public speaking I’d ever heard, their only reaction was “But he’s homeless.”