Tell me how you get through the day, and I will tell you where your greatness lies.
Try to tell me while your cheeks are full, and we will both laugh until we cry.
Napoleon will laugh loudest.
Poor Napoleon.
He shares his name with an emperor who conquered half a million square miles, including the world’s preeminent cheese-producing regions. But Napoleon does not command a single square of Velveeta.
He shares his name with a pastry favored by fancy persons and stuffed with pastry cream. But Napoleon shares neither of these attributes.
He does share his cheeks with every hamster, gerbil, and squirrel who ever stored up snacks for winter. But Napoleon’s jowls are as vacant as a beach cabana in October.
Still, Napoleon laughs.
Napoleon has something better than a mouthful of bologna or a paltry half-million square miles.
Napoleon has greatness.
This is not what fancy people call it. They nibble their pastries carefully, so as not to get crumbs on their bow ties and egos.
Alas for them. Greatness always comes with crumbs.
Napoleon’s tabby stripes were smudged with “supposedlies.” He was supposedly paralyzed. He was supposedly incontinent. He was supposedly running out of time, until time itself bowed in homage.
There is a straightforward way to tell this story. A smallish stray landed in a shelter. An intake exam observed limited mobility, questionable bathroom ability, and cheeks of considerable size.
Given their limited capacity, the shelter could not keep him. His future was worse than smallish, until a large door opened. The stray came to Tabby’s Place, where incontinence is scarcely an inconvenience.
The stray became Napoleon, imperially adored.
But we prefer the bigger story.
Greatness always comes with crummy chapters.
Greatness zeroes in on the grains of love that will strengthen its spine.
And when it wears tabby stripes, greatness is most glorious when things seem smallish.
All at once, a world leader the size of a wombat had a future. It was sweet and zesty. “Future” tastes very different from “hopeless,” which can only be compared to olive loaf, staring blankly at you with its hollow eyes. If fear were a lunch meat, it would be olive loaf.
But fear is too haughty to be great. To be great, you must remain small, even if your cheeks are large enough to harbor fugitives, Buicks, and several sofa cushions.
You must remain small enough to investigate the tight spaces in Suite E. Napoleon sees the possibilities where the ramp meets the wall. Having been cornered by “hopeless,” Napoleon knows how to find comfort in right angles and cubbies.
He is not hiding. He is claiming comfort from every corner.
Napoleon looks wonder-struck, one hundred percent of the time, and this is how we know he is one of history’s greatest.
Getting through the day is a feat for heroes. You know this in your bones. Everyone from emperor to eggplant vendor is bewildered. We all bit off more than we could chew on the day we were born. We have all been saved from several “supposedlies” and a hundred miles of “hopeless.”
We forget. Napoleon remembers. And so he stays small, astonished, and great.
He is loving his new life inch by inch rather than mile by mile. He is too great to hurry. Wonder takes a lifetime to consume, so there is no need to cram it all in your cheeks at once.
His name may never make it to the textbook, but Napoleon is making history.
He is taking territory for the tenderhearted.
He is taking notice of every face that lights up when it notices him.
He is more continent than expected, although this is just a bonus on the Tabby’s Place continent, where we would have loved him either way.
He is aware that every exotic ordinary day is unexpected. He is too great to miss a single starry crumb.
PS: And, surprising no one, he has been adopted in the time since I wrote this post. I cannot keep up with greatness.