The path of greatness is one of constant assault; people in your life and society more broadly will attempt to flatter and harass, comfort and undermine, seduce and break you into mediocrity. An inclination towards greatness, such as I see in you Qadir, is an existential threat to mediocrity; faced with the realization of the former, the latter becomes frenzied, defensive, attempting to justify its own existence. Your aspiration will elicit opposition from the expected corners, but also from some unexpected places - friends, lovers, possibly even family; but also it will tempt a seemingly indifferent universe to conspire with you in achieving good and momentous things. You are permitted a long path to greatness, marked by the varying outcomes of experiments and adventures, but ultimately I expect nothing less from you Brother, nothing less.
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise."
—
F. Scott Fitzgerald
People rarely use the second part of this quote. It is the more important part though, I think.
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body…"
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
