At some point in our lives, we’ve reached the nadir of our sufferings to the point where we’ve found ourselves at the top of the cliffs (or a bridge or high-rise building) looking down at the moving pattern of cars, contemplating the reason to carry on.

While many of us were standing by our lonesome in that hour of darkness with nothing at our side but our negative mind, distorting our perception of the beauty in ourselves and that of the world, David in Ari Gunzburg’s “The Little Book of Greatness” has a surprise visitor: an elderly man named Pinch who champions the man’s potential to see past the confines of his own self-limiting thoughts. Nagging feelings of being overwhelmed, apprehensive and burned out are not just feelings felt by single people. They plague even the most unsuspecting, even a happily married man with kids, like David.

In David’s case, like many Millennials, it is the inertia tied to the Digital Age of information overload and compulsive checking that has him questioning the real intelligence behind the smart phone, a time-zapper which has fueled unhealthy internet addictions which have sabotaged the constructive management of his precious time. So much that he’s found himself at the top of these so-called “Cliffs of Despair” to ponder: What the hell is he doing? 

Whether or not the old man can relate to the culture of a tech savvy yuppie, he knows unhappiness no matter its manifestation. And he too walked in David’s shoes at one point, until he went from the “brink of despair to the edge of greatness” with the old-fashioned wisdom of the 5 Keys to Greatness given to him by a caring fellow to unlock what it really means to be alive.

Unfortunately for David, and many others of us out there, it sometimes takes a life-threatening experience for us to grasp the meaning of our existence and to harbor gratitude for the gifts we are bestowed from the higher power. Following his meeting with Pinch, David ventures to meet a hip bartender who tells him of the five keys beneath a starry night sky. His forthcoming adventure to learn them is intercepted by a random car accident, after which doctors tell him his health may be in jeopardy. The scenario evinces everything indeed happens for a reason. A once naive man learns to trust the process and releases his worries by exercising control over them in learning that life can change — for better or worse — in any instant, and in the revelation of 20/20 hindsight. 

While people are often plagued at the conundrum of why certain people enter their lives and others go, David learns the power of people’s presence in his, however ephemeral. (That irksome, persistent person in your life who doesn’t take social cues very well could very well be of assistance.)

In reading Gunzburg’s book, it almost feels as though the old man is God and David is Jesus, as Pinch treked up the cliffs for his pain with the goal of helping him (spoiler alert: one of the keys to greatness) so that the cycle of helping your fellow man continues. “Each key can help you unlock your true destiny,” says Pinch, a name which brings to mind the small pinch doctors tell you you’ll feel before administering a protective vaccination, or when someone feels as though their life is so dream-like they need to be “pinched.”

In the era of Coronavirus, which has isolated a generation and pushed people up those same cliffs, Gunzburg writes to empathize with the person who fell from grace and lost all hope. This inspiring little book elicits the strength in us all to escape our problems and search for solutions, and in so doing, discover our greatness.