My friend Carrie asked if I would write on the subject, “Don’t Wait until You’re Great.” It’s an intriguing subject. And though not everybody has designs on being great, I’m sure there are plenty of people who do. And many more who might have such an ambition later.

There are millions of people who want to write the next great novel and be on a level with Arundhati Roy, or who want to be the recording industry’s next Bruce Springsteen, or the film world’s next Meryl Streep. Some people want to find fame in politics and be the next JFK, and some want to be the next Michael Jordan in basketball.

There is nothing wrong with having high career aspiration, but don’t let the aspiration force you to put on a back-burner the most important goal of life – to have an awakened heart.

It’s like the advice people give to a nervous public speaker – “don’t forget to breathe.” Some things just cannot be put off. Having an awakened heart is one of them.

What I mean by having an awakened heart is having that sensitivity that leads to compassion, creativity, understanding, forgiveness, honesty, generosity, laughter, and love.

We find our path in life most clearly when we can connect to our heart. That is when we have the guidance of intuition and inspiration. That is when our heart becomes open and our vision expands. That’s when we discover what is unique about ourselves. This is when the genius that is ours alone begins to manifest.

So often we see arrogance and aloofness in those we deem great. Why is that? I think it is because in pursuing their vision of greatness, they ignore all aspects of being that seem to them irrelevant to their goal. Thus you might see greatness, like we saw in the great chess master Bobby Fischer, but it was a greatness without warmth, without compassion, without a sense of humanity. I think it is fair to say that his one-pointed personal advancement towards greatness left him, in the end, miserable and depressed.

The true mark of greatness is when someone we perceive as great recognizes the dignity and humanity in others. I think it is somewhat rare for the great and famous, when introduced to an ordinary stranger, to see the human being in front of them, and not someone who is merely a waste of time.

It’s one thing to sign an autograph; it’s another to take an interest in someone.

But if this sensitivity of the heart is not cultivated throughout life, it definitely won’t suddenly manifest when greatness dawns.

Why is it important not to wait until you’re great. It’s the same reason that we exercise. Without it, muscles atrophy. If you ignore the heart long enough, it too will atrophy. In other words, the ability to love for the sake of love is lost. Consciousness becomes extremely self-centered.

When life devolves strictly into a “what’s in it for me” attitude, without ever asking “what can I do for others,” then life becomes shallow and lonely. Behind the façade of greatness is only a life of desperation.

I remember back in 1977 when Dan Rather was the rising star on the CBS News show “60 Minutes.” I was the typical nobody, a student majoring in Broadcasting. I ran into him and his wife late at night on a sidewalk near his home in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC.

I remember gathering my courage and introducing myself to him and asking if I could interview him. He asked some questions about myself, like what did I want to do in Broadcasting, etc. He was being very gracious with his time. Then his wife said, “Dan, you don’t have time for this. Let’s go.”

Not ignoring his wife, but not ignoring me either, he asked that I call him the next morning at his home. I did and I woke him out of bed. He asked if he could call me back, which he did, but he didn’t have much time to talk because he had a flight to catch.

But he remembered me, and a few years later he returned a call to me from his office at CBS and I finally got to interview him. That showed me what kind of a human being he really was, the kind that you don’t too often see in the people we call great.

Another story that illustrates this point was from my days of studying photography. I was taking a course in a photography technique called the Zone System, a technique perfected by Ansel Adams that pertains to film exposure and printing. I liked the teacher, and asked him if I could study privately with him in his darkroom, to sharpen my darkroom skills. He said yes and we agreed upon a price for the lessons.

A few nights later I met my teacher, named David, in his darkroom. I had some negatives I wanted to print. He gave me some pointers and I was able to make some excellent prints. At the end of the night I handed him the money for the lesson. He gave most of it back, claiming he was also working on his own prints.  He then said that is what Ansel would have done. When I asked what he meant, he told me the following story:

He had taken a workshop with Ansel Adams at Yosemite and it made a big impression on him. A few years later, when he just happened to be driving through Carmel, California, he thought he would try to find out where Ansel Adams lived. That wasn’t hard to do and when he knocked on the door, Ansel Adams answered.

David explained to Ansel  that a few years earlier he had taken a workshop from him in Yosemite and just wanted to say hello. Ansel invited him in, gave him a tour of his studio and darkroom, and invited him to stay for lunch.

His generosity made such an impression on David, that he decided he was going to base his life on that. Thus his statement to me, “That’s what Ansel would have done.”

So if you want to be seen as really great when you achieve a level of greatness in your career, open your heart now. Be generous. Don’t be aloof. Every encounter with people is an opportunity to make a deep impression that can transform someone’s life.

That’s greatness of the human spirit. But if you wait until you’re great to express it, it might be too late. Not only that, but the life of greatness you had set your eyes on in reality turns out to be a life of cold loneliness.

The Beatles, on their album Abbey Road, expressed it perfectly on the song, “The End.” The lyrics of the song were only one line long: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”