[Good Man / Great Man – Lyrics]
A friend came to me the other day…
sat down heavy, like the world had slid onto his shoulders.
He asked me,
“Man… what am I doing wrong?”
He said he behaved.
Did everything right.
Went to college.
Worked the job.
Stayed in line the whole way through.
And still…
still he wakes up unhappy.
I looked at him,
quietly…
the way a mentor studies a question he’s heard a hundred times
but still hurts to answer.
I said,
“Reach for the stars.”
He blinked — confused.
Like I’d handed him poetry
when he wanted a map.
So I told him to listen…
really listen.
I said,
“You’re a good man.
You show up.
You wake on time.
Dress the part.
Carry the weight.
Take care of what’s yours.
And there’s honor in that.
There is.”
“But I need to tell you something
that might crack the floor beneath your feet…”
“You are a slave to the system.
A very good one,
but a slave all the same.”
“You’ve given your time,
your back,
your body,
your imagination…
slowly…
quietly…
piece by piece…
to the machine we call society.”
“And now you wonder
why you feel hollow?”
He looked at me —
not angry,
not hurt,
just…
searching.
Like he expected the next line to fix everything.
But truth doesn’t fix.
Truth reveals.
So I said,
“The key to happiness is freedom.
But not the kind they put in slogans.
Not the kind they sell you wrapped in flags.
I mean the freedom
a man forges
when he becomes more than what the system designed him to be.”
“You have been a good man,
and the world loves good men…
because good men don’t question the script.”
“But to be a great man…
you must step out of the shadow of your own obedience.
You must risk choosing for yourself.
You must break the small, invisible chains
you didn’t even know you were wearing.”
“A great man
thinks beyond the mechanisms that raised him.
A great man
writes his own algorithm.
A great man
stands at the edge of his fear
and steps forward anyway.”
“And if you succeed —
you will become great.
And if you fail —
your courage alone
will lift you higher
than all the days you spent in quiet compliance.”
He nodded.
He understood…
or at least, he thought he did.
He went out into the world
to practice what I told him.
And for a week,
I felt proud.
Not of myself —
but of him.
Of the spark he carried away.
But then…
he came back.
Sat down in the same chair.
Same slump.
Same weight.
He said,
“I tried to think of an idea.
Something bold.
Something to change my life.
But I couldn’t find one.
Not a single one.”
Then he looked at me
with the softest kind of desperation
and said,
“Can you choose for me?”
And in that moment…
my heart broke a little.
Not because he failed.
But because he could no longer imagine
what choosing even felt like.
The system hadn’t just taken his time.
It had taken his inner voice.
His ability to want.
To risk.
To dream.
To move without permission.
So I looked at him —
this good man,
this obedient, loyal, well-shaped man —
and all I could say was:
“You’re a good man…
and some roads are meant to be walked,
not changed.”
Because sometimes,
the quiet tragedy
is not that a man is trapped…
but that he no longer remembers
there was ever
a door.