Unfortunately, many people feel incapable of reaching greatness. They don’t think they can accomplish anything significant. This kills their ambition. If a person feels insignificant and believes he can’t become someone special, he won’t have the right ambition. He will just try to satisfy this drive with honor and attention, which won’t work. No matter how much admiration he receives, he will remain unsatisfied and distressed from his unfulfilled desires.
Many people look up to those who have used their amazing talents to accomplish great feats, convinced that they are superior. People think that only someone born with unique talents can become great. However, Hashem determines success based on what the person accomplished with his capabilities and challenges. A person must do his best with whatever he was given. Greatness is not measured by what was actually accomplished.
What makes a deed great is the difficulty. When a person does good despite overwhelming challenges or goes against his nature to do what’s right, he creates the most special accomplishments. These deeds are worth being proud of. Mitzvos done despite difficulty are not “just a little better” than mitzvos done with ease. They are infinitely greater.
Growing up in the 21st century, we face many challenges. Immorality is rampant. From a young age, we learn about how amazing it is to run after our desires, and it is so easy to indulge. For us to prevail in any of the challenges we are bombarded with, we must go against our nature. Though this means we face great danger, it doesn’t mean we are at a disadvantage. Rather, we have a tremendous opportunity to become great.
Challenges like these have never been seen before. If we can prevail despite them, we will accomplish something unique. Each act of self-control we achieve in this generation is an accomplishment the great people of earlier generations didn’t have. Though they achieved tremendously and reached levels we cannot fathom, Hashem did not grant them the opportunity to face the challenges we do. We must become excited by our challenges because they provide us with the chance to become great. We must grab this astounding opportunity to accomplish!
Take advantage of your ability to reach greatness. Dream of becoming great and know you can achieve it. Follow that drive and become someone significant whom you will be proud of being forever. You will be happy and feel great when you accomplish.
We must be careful not to sublimate this drive into a desire for honor. This can happen if we chase after honor when we feel the urge for attention. This increases our desire for honor until it takes over and diverts our dream of becoming great. It can also happen if we don’t taste success often enough, or if we become disheartened because we believe we can’t accomplish. Desire for attention stems from our desire for approval, which comes from an unfulfilled desire to feel good about ourselves. If we don’t taste success or think we can’t succeed, our desire to feel good about ourselves will transfer to something we think we can attain, such as honor. We might even feel a stronger urge to run after physical pleasures. We might be tempted to invent meaningless “accomplishments” to strive for instead of real ones. Ultimately, however, none of this will make us happy. We will keep longing and searching, but nothing will satisfy us.
We need to realize that though it might be covered up by other desires, what we really want is to accomplish and become special. We want to be great. We want greatness that lasts forever. When we work toward this goal, we will know that we are accomplishing. We will leave the longing behind, replacing it with happiness and fulfillment.
If we unleash our desire to become significant, we will change our lives. We will approach life with fire and ambition. We will be excited about accomplishing, instead of feeling forced to do good against our will. We will be excited each time we choose correctly, especially when it is difficult. We will feel ourselves growing and becoming people we will be proud of forever. There is nothing more exhilarating than this feeling.
We must remember that we were given the greatest opportunity of all time — to become significant forever by winning the greatest challenge ever. If we dream big, our battles will be so sweet because we will feel ourselves attaining greatness, and we will find the motivation we need to succeed in the battle of the generation.
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