From Dream to Delusion: Narcissistic Greatness

I believe that within the soul of every human being is a desire to be great. As children of the Greatest Being in the universe, it is innate; we desire to emulate our Parent. The circumstances of life may squelch, skew or supplant this desire, we may act upon it or not, we may ignore it all together, but it can never fully be destroyed. Exactly how it is manifest differs from person to person, though, because we are all human, each manifestation of greatness will have distinct similarities.

Part of being great is leaving a mark, having an impact. In cliché terms, it means changing the world. A noble goal; too often, however, our dreams of grandeur turn to delusions of grandeur and, instead of changing the world as we dreamed when young, we end up embittered and withdraw, content to merely live until we die. The key component of the shift from dream to delusion is narcissism.

Narcissism [nahr-suh-siz-em]: inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity

When we allow narcissism to become the guiding force of our lives—often, understand, unconsciously—we begin to see our quest to “change the world” as a way to define ourselves and our greatness, rather than as a service to our fellow man. There are two problems with this approach. First, our focus is wrong. We care less about how we help others and more about what it makes us look like. This leads to the second problem. In our narcissism our focus is on ourselves, how we look. Desiring to look as good as possible, we want to do the biggest thing possible. Unsatisfied with giving a bum money for dinner—that’s not a large impact, it doesn’t make us look great—we have to accomplish something grander; we can’t help one because we want to help—or be seen to help—a million. When these massive projects fail abysmally—or worse, never even get started—we write off our dreams as delusions and, in the final stage of narcissism, become wrapped up in only ourselves.

By small and simple things are great things brought to pass. ~Alma 37:6

We don’t understand how change takes place. In our effort to end poverty in America, we pass by the bum on Temple Square. “That’s too small,” we think. “It wouldn’t make a difference.” We forget that that is the difference to be made. I’m reminded of the story of the boy on the beach, throwing starfish that had been trapped on the beach as the tide went down back into sea. An older man—embittered perhaps—came along and berated the boy. “Look,” he said. “There are miles of beach and hundreds of starfish. You’ll never make a difference.” The little boy, throwing another starfish back into the sea, replied, “I made a difference to that starfish.”

Oh that we could be like that little child, unafraid to simply roll up our sleeves and go to work. Did he save them all? No, in that he failed. But where so many of us wouldn’t have started—after all, failure makes us look bad—he began. That is the key. If ever we are to make a difference, we must ignore the scoffs of others; free ourselves of our narcissism and go to work doing small things. After all, greatness is not about how we look; it’s about what we do.