Basking in My Greatness | Sober and Unashamed

I am a really, really great person.

I didn’t say I am a great writer or a great meeting facilitator or a great money maker or a great technology user or a great soccer coach. I also don’t claim to be a great husband or father, roles that are objectively more important over my lifespan.

But I am a great person. Superb, really.

I never do anything to intentionally hurt people — even when they have hurt me first. I greet everyone I know or meet with a smile and an enthusiastic interaction. I feed my wife’s cats consistently and without complaint, I eat vegetables and go outside daily even when it is cold, and I dutifully recycle my glass, aluminum, cardboard, and plastics even though I have serious doubts about what happens after they are dumped all together into the back of the Denver solid waste truck.

Pretty damn great, right?

Most people who say they are great, aren’t. We are taught to be humble, and humility is an inextricable aspect of greatness. Gandhi and Nelson Mandella and Mother Teresa probably never called themselves great in spite of their own clear greatness. The people I hear bragging about their greatness these days make me vomit in the back of my mouth a little. They espouse their own greatness, and wait in anxious anticipation for the reaction. If…