What makes great men great...

Edison said genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. As a kid I used to read this just for the sake of reading it and not really understanding the truly profound truth behind those words. Now when Iam standing at the threshold of my adult life I am able to get a small idea of why this statement is so important for all of us. The perspiration that Edison was referring to need not be the actual physical labor but also the mental grit that it takes to achieve something.As I see it there are 2 types of people in life, those who know what is right and those who "PRACTICE " what they believe to be right. Almost 99 percent of the people in this planet will come under the first category. They are the lot who know that they should not be watching the movie before an exam and still watch it, they are the ones who know they should not be distracted but still get distracted , they are the ones who know they should not be eating those extra calories but still eat it . In short these are the people who have the "inspiration" but are not willing to do the perspiration. The inspiration I am talking about is knowledge of what is right and what is wrong and the perspiration is the mental determination to set yourself in the path of your dreams. All men (at least most) dream of making it big. They want to leave their imprints in the world but how many actually manage to achieve that ?? Does it mean that those who did not achieve are not skillful enough to do it? I definitely dont think so. I think they dont achieve because they lack the will to do what is necessary to achieve. They are not prepared to leave their leave their little titillation in order to achieve what they believe in. While on the other hand the ones who actually achieve it are the ones who do what needs to be done to achieve it. They are the guys who evaluate their exact position and do what is necessary to set themselves in the right track. Easy as it might sound its one of the toughest mental challenges faced by humans. If it had been easy then we would have had more remarkable men in this world. In order to explain my point I wont talk about the clichéd examples of Edison, Gandhi or Gates. I would rather talk about someone whom i know quite well, some one who falls in to the 99 percent category ie. ME (Arun Venugopal ) . I am a prototype of the 99% lot. I live with a lot of ambitions and ideas (ie. the inspirations) but I am totally lacking in the perspiration part. I come to the conclusions after retrospecting on all those great things in life i could have done. I knew that I need to work hard on physics and chemistry to crack JEE but still did not work on those. All those competitions and projects which I knew I should put more effort for but did not bother to (putting all the blame on my team and guide). Finally I knew that the only thing I need to watch out for cracking CAT would be my calculation mistakes and once again i never took an effort to correct them. Finally this paragraph is the epitome of my lack of perspiration, I know that the last few sentences are a quagmire of tenses which I am supposed to be mastering but I am not. You might wonder why I am holding this session of self slandering. The reason I write this is to give myself a kick ass effect so that every time I read this Ill know why I am what I am and not what I wanted to be. The final conclusion that I wish to draw is that we dont get anything by understanding what is right (or what has to be done) for by realizing that we have merely traveled 1% of the distance that we need to travel. To travel the 99% we need to actually take control of ourselves and break the inertia. For the easiest path that shows up before us is not always the best path. For we are not electrons or fluids to choose the path of least resistance. Its the rejection of this easiest path that makes great men great.