Unknown Artist:
The battle at Issus in 333 BC: Alexander the Great of Macedonia is chasing the fleeing Darius III. Coloured etching.
(Unknown)

"Nobody, other than a dwindling cadre of his truest believers and a whole bunch of clueless billionaires, will ever believe another word he says."

Alexander did not chase his greatness. His greatness chased him and ultimately caught up. His conquerings began with little greatness, for he had not yet proven anything beyond perhaps his audacity. Slowly, he came to conquer territory, eventually enough for his greatness to finally catch up with him. ChasingGreatness represents perhaps one of the greatest misunderstandings in this world. From the naive perspective that any beginning offers, it seems desired greatness simply must be chased, as if that were the right and proper process by which greatness had always been achieved. But speak to those who have managed to achieve greatness, if that’s even the proper description of the possession process, and they might disclose a surprisingly different experience, one where greatness eventually cornered and insisted upon inhabiting them. No chasing ever actually required.

They might also disclose their experience with chasing, how they invested much passion, treasure, and youth, only to produce disappointment and frustration. They seemed more cursed the more they chased, yet chasing seemed like the only available option if their desired greatness was ever to be achieved; if they were ever going to achieve their desired greatness. How could they have known that they would only sow disappointment and frustration when ChasingGreatness? What of our incumbent, who sure seemed as though he had succeeded? Wasn’t he a millionaire several times over when he declared his intention to “Make America Great Again?” Reasonable people have perfectly reasonable questions about whether our incumbent was ever really as rich and successful as he insisted. Since he was also a well-known con man, his assertions about his financial and social situation might reasonably be questioned. We know for sure that he portrayed a rich and famous person on television. Beyond that, absent a review of his actual financials, which he has for some unknown reason steadfastly refused to allow, his experience with greatness remains a question.

This situation produced a near-perfect double bind, though. His presumption to greatness—and, to be fair, he had a well-known name—seemed to give him license to pursue greatness, whatever that was. It certainly seemed as if he had already blazed a personal trail from obscurity to greatness, so it seemed a no-brainer that he would be the character to lead our quest to Make America Great Again. We could just follow his experienced lead. If this wasn’t ChasingGreatness, I didn’t know what it was. Almost nobody seemed to know what it was, except those who were certain it was finally a way to successfully catch greatness. We learned it turned out to be a pursuit of something other than greatness, though we leave with little evidence that it wasn’t an otherwise reasonable pursuit of greatness. We have not yet learned that Greatness cannot be so conventionally achieved, that greatness does whatever it damned well pleases, and chooses who it inhabits. It cannot be conventionally conquered, an understanding even Alexander the-freaking Great possessed back in 333 B-freaking-C!

The passionate pursuit of what cannot be achieved has provided the source material for ten million starving-artist sagas. Sometimes greatness finds an artist while they distract themselves chasing the greatness they envision, which almost always turns out to be a greatness not really worth possessing. What in the artist’s modest upbringing might pass them the template for successfully ChasingGreatness? What in their struggling initial artistic experiences might finally tip the scale? In retrospect, greatness was not a deliberate act, nor a series of concatenated, contemplated plans. The greatness happened, or it didn’t, and ChasingGreatness made little difference other than perhaps to distract from whatever it might have been that actually attracted greatness to somebody. The chasing provided the noise and feathers, which, in retrospect, had nothing to do with attracting greatness. ChasingGreatness reliably produces cynics, wounded optimists who extended their faith and feel punished. Their vengeance might be measured as just beneath the Lord’s on whatever grand cosmic instrument measures vengeance.

ChasingGreatness stands as an early indicator of Obsolescence. Focusing energy on what cannot be achieved by focusing energy reliably defeats intentions. Those who attract followers so they can focus their attention on ChasingGreatness have proven themselves the most evil characters in this world’s history so far. It might be that our incumbent unknowingly encouraged the Chasing of Greatness. If so, he deserves forgiveness that no deliberate promoter of ChasingGreatness could ever merit. He seems to be awakening to a shocking Comeuppance, though, as everything he’s touched surprisingly seems to have turned to shit just as the midterms hit. Such things, which were never really things at all, tend to evaporate without much in the way of warning. Our incumbent has been insisting even more emphatically that he’s actually achieved the greatness he pursued. Nobody, other than a dwindling cadre of his truest believers and a whole bunch of clueless billionaires, will ever believe another word he says.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz