Sunday Night With John: When Good Trumps Great

When Good Trumps Hate

John Paul Derryberry 

There is a running joke in my house that I'm just a good guy. It has to do with Anne's 92-year-old grandma who still shovels her walk when it snows. Alta looked at Anne when we got married and described me as just an ordinary, kind guy. That's right, nothing spectacular about me. At first, it hit my self-esteem pretty hard, to be described as regular and just merely good. It made me think that I'm not putting out the vibe that I'm great.

Then, you see what people have to sacrifice to be considered great. And I'm not talking about the hard work, the long hours, and the singular focus on a dream. Plenty of good people do all those things and never seek or receive the credit that comes along with all that work. I'm talking about the sacrificing of their morals, standards, accountability, and ethics.

We watch Donald Trump call everything and everyone who points out his flaws, fake news and a witch hunt. We observed Hillary Clinton never taking the blame for any of her missteps and always blaming someone beneath her.  We are witnessing Kanye West throw out ridiculous opinions and explain it away through the free thought-free-speech garbage can of excuses. We see individual men bemoan the actions of other men only to find out they were hoping their own unwanted sexual advances and behaviors would never see the light of day. Everyone made this choice consciously: to ditch being good for the chance of being adored as excellent by their audience. In the pursuit of fame, power, and a lot of money they applied character and accountability as mere makeup.

For so many, the notion of creating a legacy of being a great human has made them ignore faults, participate in immense contradictory thinking, and dismiss the opinions of dissenters.  I cannot go down that road, so I've shut the door on being great. Because I see what it would cost me, and that, my friend, is too high a price to pay. We must follow our moral compasses. We must live by our ethical standards. We must take accountability for our actions. If we ever want a better world, we will start promoting people capable of creating good not those who are attempting to achieve greatness.

If we aim for good, we can conduct ourselves in a way that brings people together. We can admit our faults and grow. We can listen to and hear our dissenters and find common ground with them. We can maintain the trust and respect of those around us because our agenda is not based on our legacy. It's based on something bigger than ourselves, something our current President and many other political leaders seem to have forgotten.  Good does trump great, but it won't happen tomorrow or next week but through the sands of time. Good rises and surpasses those consumed with greatness because greatness is so often empty of any morality. Goodness is just that, people filled with virtue acting in a way to benefit more than themselves. Maybe I'm not a running joke anymore, I'm finally comfortable with who I am, not the Great John Paul Derryberry, but the good john paul derryberry. And I'm all good with that.