Watching a program on the early days of film making last night, which followed a film about a failed film inventor.  In the program, many descendants of  famous early movie people gave accounts of the character of their ancestors and how their strength, risk-taking, creativity and sheer willpower led them to succeed.
These were guys who invested everything they had in a projector and a storefront and built that into companies like Warner brothers and Fox.  American success stories.
We love to hear these stories- but what about that failed inventor?  His story got made into a film, at least.  I suppose if you believe in an afterlife, and you further believe that anyone there would care about such things, you might believe he is satisfied now that his story has been told.
Me, I like the boring stories.  Stories about people who neither succeeded nor failed spectacularly, but who just lived their lives and enjoyed themselves doing it.  It doesn't mean they didn't do interesting things, have powerful feelings, love or hate deeply.  It doesn't mean they weren't strong or didn't take risks or were not creative or lacked willpower.  Ordinary people do amazing things sometimes.
Living an ordinary life takes more courage and willpower than we give credit for.  There really ought to be more stories about it.
(Of course, history is written by the victors.  The thousands of nickelodean operators whose storefront businesses didn't grow into major studios never got the chance to make a movie about their lives.  But these days we all can, if we want to.)