Who is the greatest person that ever lived?

Hm, you are not going to like my answer.

No one.

Not one person who lived (or lives) is 'great'. Now, some were good. Some were clever. Some were talented. But everyone, without an exemption, lived ordinarily.

They ate, they breathed, they slept, they went to the toilet. Oh sure, they had their movements-moments sorry. But so do we all.

The tendency, and danger, is for people to venerate a chosen few. As if they are special. The heights they occupy unattainable by the rest of us. Don't you believe it!

I guess it's always easier to applaud than perform. Especially if the Great Ones are no longer living. They are unable, then, to make fools of themselves: egg on their face from an affair or a public fart. And the longer they've been dead, the more comfortably they do rest. Because the harder it would be to dig up dirt.

And if there does turn out to be a skeleton or two in the closet . . . Oh, how quaint! How very human! It only goes to show that the Great One was genuine. He or she can do no wrong.

What I's saying is this: all wore out their clothes at the elbows and knees. All had to brush their teeth and pay their bills. In between their literary novels, artworks or inventions they had an awful lot of time on their hands--time when they surely messed about, and up.

I'm telling you. Take it from me (and then do something with it), I've know the odd genius. They were just ordinary people.

Sometimes less.