To be great is to be misunderstood

To be great is to be misunderstood - Ralph Waldo Emerson Who want's to be great at the cost of being misunderstood? It enforces alienation. You become an alien. Who want's to be an alien in return for being great? For clarification of what 'great' means in this context: People consider someone to be great when he shows excellence, ONLY WHEN he plays within a certain boundary / set rules / their understanding. Beyond the boundary, they don't consider him to be great. But this boundary is arbitrary and baseless, and being limited ("compromised", I would say) to the boundary is not truly to be great.