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I watched an interesting film last night. Perhaps one of the best films I’ve seen in fact.

I felt inspired, I felt motivated and moved to change.

I wasn’t inspired to change anything in particular, just to move towards change, changing things, change as an existential concept and change as a tangible and achievable goal.

Then in other aspects of my everyday life I am faced with people who speak of change, you talk of change as if it is the next big thing. It’s not. Change is the biggest thing. Now. And guess what? It always will be.

Change is what great people aspire to and change is what great people achieve.

Change the way you write, talk, live, drive to work, answer the phone, your house, car or blog design, change anything. Whatever it is, we all want change.

I am not one to post rhetorical questions but let me ask, are you a person who talks about change or are you changing the world?

I have been struggling lately with a bit of internal strife. I am a thinking man. I always have been. I think alot, all the time, non-stop, about everything.

My latest mind-bender is whether great men (and women) would be great in any era or context or was it there social background and influences that moulded them?

Please don’t tell me that it’s a mixture of both, that nature and nurture both apply in equal amount. A spoon full of sugar doesn’t make the medicine go down. I want an answer. I have an answer in my head but it keeps becoming null and void as this week as progressed.

Let me explain what I mean by great men. Firstly the reason that I don’t refer to great people is because I am a man and I relate to great men moreso than I do to great women. Margaret Thatcher, Mother Theresa and others were and are still great women and human beings. But I want to focus more on men like Ghandi, Mandela, Richard Branson, Mark Shuttleworth, Bill Gates, Hitler, Stalin, Mugabe, Biko and others.

These men may not all have been good men, but they were all great. One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist just as one man’s greatness is another man’s failure.

But it is undisputable that Hitler was a great leader. He had the entire world fighting against him. That is greatness. He was not a good man, and was in fact an evil man, but great nonetheless.

My question is this: Would these men still have been great if things in their lives were different? If they had loving parents, if they lived in Mexico instead of Germany or were wealthy instead of poor. If Branson was a trust-fund baby would he still have had the drive? If Ghandi lived somewhere that promoted equality instead of segregation would he still have been great? If Mandela was white would he have helped to end apartheid?

I personally believe that these men are great and would have been great irrespective of their surroundings. I firmly believe that great men are great and are destined for greatness be it evil or good, rich or poor, greatness prevails.