Greatness.

© meghla_akashe_pori

Truly great people aren't great by nature.  Greatness takes effort.  Greatness takes something out of a person, leaves a hollow in their humanity where natural, self-preserving pride used to rule and still tries to haunt them.  But there has to be an empty space, else greatness wouldn't hurt.

They must be humble enough to earn pain, and that is not only what they know, but what they can't see or will never learn about - half by circumstance, half by their disposition to turn the other cheek.  They are the people considered safe and comfortable to hate, because the world has nothing to fear from them.  They are the ones nobody likes to look at, and the ones everybody goes out of their way not to hear.

They are quiet voices with loud, unpopular thoughts.  They wear a Light on their sleeve that dazzles the sun and stops traffic when drivers aren't looking over their shoulders.  They are Atlas, hunched over, out of sight, under a globe.  They are the beautiful center of that earth, which nobody believes in.

Truly great people are labelled wrong behind their backs, since it is too inconvenient to look them in the eyes.  In the larger scheme of things, it means nothing, because they know that, for better or worse, a label does not make a person.  It will not hide their greatness, or their weaknesses.  If it would do either, it is because the world is camouflaged around worldly characteristics.  But even this is useless, since truly great people look past all camouflage, and accept whatever is left as the truth.