Today, when I was riding around the city with my girlfriend as usual, I suddenly realized an important thing and then I asked her:

Kiddie, do you remember a genius who was very poor when he was a child? He had to gather fireflies to make a lamp in order to read books [1]? And another musical genius who had volunteered to serve for free in a theater in order to practice his skills? Do you think they are great because of what they had done or because they was born great so they could do such things?

Her answer reasonated with my thought. They had become great persons because they deliberately chose to do great things.

Sometimes we could look up to a person who is famous because he has done wonderful things for the world and admire him for what he has done. We even dub him the word “genius”. But actually what we should respect him is the way he has become the man he is now. Maybe he has to sacrifice a lot, worked harder than anybody else to achieve greatness.

We sometimes are too lazy to do that. Michelangelo said it all:

“If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius.”

Great man does what lazy people don’t.

[1] His name is Nguyễn Hiền