Journal #21

"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" (Emerson, Self-Reliance).  

When I first read this quote, I had no idea what I was reading.  I backed up and looked at each part of the sentence.  Wherever there was punctuation, I stopped and made sense of that before moving on.  From this one sentence, I gained more knowledge on what Emerson values.  He values life and going with the flow.  Instead of trying to fit in and imitating the people around you, be yourself.  Being yourself will get you a lot farther in life than if you were to alter your behavior and looks with each new trend.  First off, if you are not afraid to let yourself go, you will have a higher confidence level.  Having confidence in yourself is one of the many keys to being successful. Not only does it affect your confidence, but you will be happy because no one can tell you that you are living YOUR life wrong.  If you were to be part of a new trend, people could tell you that you were wearing the wrong thing or acting wrong.  

The section that stuck out to me the most was , "that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion" (Emerson, Self-Reliance). This is saying that everyone needs to accept who they are as they are.  People can change their outward appearance and actions, but they cannot change the person inside of them.  God made us all unique and different, which is what makes the human race so interesting.  In today's day, fitting in is what people strive for.  Trying to fit in comes with doing things that you would not normally do.  Every single person in this world just needs to realize that they are the only ones who can be the person they are.