Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Boris Pasternack’s work, Dr. Zhivago.
“It’s good when a man deceives your expectations, when he doesn’t correspond to the preconceived notion of him. To belong to a type is the end of a man, his condemnation. If he doesn’t fall into any category, if he’s not representative, half of what’s demanded of him is there. He’s free of himself, he has achieved a grain of immortality.”
Note: The moment we can honestly say, “I don’t have to be who you want me to be. I choose to be what I am destined to become, and I will choose the path,” we are free. We are free to fail miserably. We are free to succeed beyond our wildest expectations. Waylon Jennings in his song, The Chokin’ kind, sang, “You can kill a man with bullets, poison, or a knife / But it hurts him more to take his pride and run his life / Whatever it is you want, girl, I hope you find / But that hat don’t fit my head, ’cause it’s the choking kind.” When we have the internal freedom to live up to the expectations we set for ourselves, we discover the who we were meant to become.
