Don't Be Great

  I just listened to a piece on NPR in which the speaker gave some advice he'd been given in turn: "Don't be great. Be solid."
  Interesting advice; something which I have been thinking about for a while. Why do we as humans feel the need to spend a large amount of our time thinking about what we could do if only we had the resources, why do we feel the need to write about what we might accomplish if only we had the perfect job, prime funding or the proper alignment of the cosmos? After feeling this way, hypothesizing about the finer details of what we know can be accomplished, we sit and savor the thought that it is the singular I that developed this plan, it is I that will be lauded, I that will have the success, I will be the one that the masses beat a trail to...won't I?