Those who came before us cleared the easy paths we now walk, solved problems we no longer have to face, ate hardtack and salt pork so we can do mimosas and brunch. We live with the tailwind of their accumulated knowledge, sacrifice, and effort.
Just as we should honor our ancestors, we should be grateful for the giants who worked for our betterment. Beyond “standing on the shoulders of giants,” you should live as if your giants and ancestors are watching over your shoulder.
This isn’t about feeling the judgmental stare of long-dead people burning through time. Don’t pressure yourself to live under the weight of others’ expectations. Just choose the giants (or the parts of them) you want living in your head for good reason. Their invisible presence can guide you and challenge you to aim higher. Let this haunting be productive.
Find people with characteristics you want to emulate, and live as if they can see your actions. Giants can be:
- The mentor who saw or supported your potential before you did.
- The grandparent who held quiet dignity in the face of hardship.
- The historical figure who brought something new to this world, despite every naysayer.
- The teacher who saw through your bullshit and demanded better.
- The fictional character whose unwavering moral compass helped them navigate ethical dilemmas.
- The ancestor who crossed oceans and lived hard so you could have opportunities they could never imagine.
In biography after biography, you’ll notice that giants often lived in dialogue with other giants, both real and imagined. Thoughts inspired by Plato and Aristotle littered Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, blurring the lines between art and science. Einstein admired interdisciplinary thinkers like da Vinci and kept a portrait of Isaac Newton on his wall, honoring the man who gave us the very laws Einstein himself built upon. And Newton is the one who admitted, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
As humans with egos, we’d love to be remembered. But do you even know the names of your great-great grandparents? Even the giants fade.
In a poem, Charles Wright describes our lives as “an endless falling of seeds.” We enter a world grown by others. Goodness comes from trying to leave it better than we found it.
While we’ll never reach the intellectual stature of some giants, remember that you may be someone’s giant (especially if you’re a parent). Just try to build something worth standing on, even if your name isn’t on it.
“Deep is the abyss of time that will close over us. A few talented minds will raise their heads above it, and although they too must eventually depart into silence, yet for long will they resist oblivion and assert their freedom.”
~Seneca, Letters on Ethics (Book)
“The way you thought of your life once, an endless falling of seeds.”
~Charles Wright, Country Music (Poems)
