I read this obituary the other day that brought a smile to my face. How good would it be to die, and in your death you actually inspire those who are living.

Here is one example of exactly that…

For a late starter, the career of award-winning Hollywood producer David Brown took an extraordinarily successful course. The former journalist produced some major hits that not only became classics, but also made him – and his sometimes employer 20th Century Fox – plenty of money. They included Jaws, The Sting, Chocolat, A Few Good Men and Driving Miss Daisy.

He was a partner with Richard Zanuck in the early 1970s – when they produced the blockbusters Jaws, The Verdict and Cocoon – before Brown started his own career as a film and theatrical producer.

Brown was still producing movies such as Chocolat well into his 80s, including supervising filming on location.

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‘See to it that no one carries you off as spoil or makes you yourselves captive by his so-called philosophy and intellectualism and vain deceit (idle fancies and plain nonsense), following human tradition (men’s ideas of the material rather than the spiritual world), just crude notions following the rudimentary and elemental teachings of the universe and disregarding [the teachings] of Christ (the Messiah).’ Colossians 2:8 (Amplified)

And yet I love to study the philosophers of the ages and their writings – whether it be Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Demosthenes, Homer, Hippocrates, Aeschines, Plutarch, Montaigne, Machiavelli, Aurelius, Seneca, Spinoza, Hegel, Kant, Kierkegaard, Bacon, Nietzsche, Emerson, Thoreau amongst many others.

But if you allow yourself to be swayed wholeheartedly by any of these great writers and thinkers, without rightly dividing it against truth, then you could possibly find yourself in the company of those who have yielded to a mindset that is warped, and at times misguided.

When I spend time in the company of great thinkers I make sure that my internal moral and spiritual compass is set – so that I can chew on what is good, that builds, that adds to my life, and which makes me a better contributor to my society and my family. The rest I simply spit out or put aside for another time.

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‘It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a God.’ Seneca

So in Seneca’s view there are two poignant points that equate to true greatness. So let’s look at them more closely.

1. The Frailty Of A Man

The longer I live the more I realize how fragile the human life really is. We can never tell when our time is up, or the number of years we have here on planet earth. When compared to the powers of nature’s force – such as wind, earthquake, rain, snow, or fire we are so puny, so insignificant in power to combat whatever mother earth decides to present to us.

For all man’s advancements in knowledge and technology we still reside within the mercies of the elements. We are but ants in an expansive planet that sits within the vastness of a far greater universe. Specks we are. Twinkling stars in a spatial arena that is beyond explanation. Our greatest strengths exhibited do not even register on the scale of weakness when compared to the rest of creation.

2. The Security Of A God

The Apostle Paul, one of the greatest apostles who ever lived, wrote that God said to him that God’s ’strength comes into its own in your weaknesses’.

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When I find myself involved in a one on one conversation with a friend or a colleague, I suddenly find myself throwing about my thoughts more easily. They seem to present themselves with a greater sense of order. And for some reason I see those thoughts just that much clearer when they have been translated into words.

It is at that point that I at times seem to be much wiser than I ever imagined. And from just one hour of interactive discussion I find that I have stumbled upon more than I would ever have unveiled if I had locked myself away for a day on my own in the company of one.

For with the assistance given through good counsel and stimulating conversation my affairs are suddenly surveyed with a greater clarity and a straightening resonance.

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‘All mankind is divided into three classes: those who are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.’ Benjamin Franklin

1. Those Who Are Immovable

There are those amongst us who are stuck. Stuck in tradition. Stuck in their ways. Stuck in comfort. Stuck in religious thought-sets. Stuck in bad habits. Stuck in mindsets. Stuck.

And there is a chance that as they live stuck they will die stuck. Immovable. Not even an atomic bomb will move them. In business, if you’re stuck, you won’t be in business for long. Immovable in life, in family life, in organizations, in education, in institutions, in politics, in anything and everything.

To be stuck is to be unstuck – destined for destruction. Immovable.

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