It Takes Courage to Follow Your Path
In his work, Self Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson writes, ““There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.” P. 111
NOTE: We are who we are. What we do with who we are is up to us. It takes heaps of courage to recognize that whatever we do or become is up to us. We are free men and women. When we capitulate and envy or imitate others we sacrifice our freedom for an illusion. No singer, for example, knows when he begins his career whether he will be publicly successful. The singer knows in her heart that she must sing. Whatever our path, if we give it our best, we do not need the applause of others to know we are successful. Our hearts will know.