Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You
You are something new in this world. Be glad of it. Make the most of what nature gave you. You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you.
For better or for worse, you must cultivate your own little garden. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life. As Emerson said in his essay on "Self-Reliance" : "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 him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."
That is the way Emerson said it. But here is the way a poet -the late Douglas Malloch-said it:
If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill.
Be a scrub in the valley-but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush, if you can't be a tree.
If you can't be a bush, be a bit of the grass.
And some highway happier make;
If you can't be a muskie, then just be a bass-
But the liveliest bass in the lake!
We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew.
There's something for all of us here.
There's big work to do and there's lesser to do
And the task we must do is the near.
If you can't be a highway, then just be a trail,
If you can't be the sun, be a star;
It isn't by the size that you win or you fail-
Be the best of whatever you are!
To cultivate a mental attitude that will bring us peace and freedom from worry, here is Rule Summary:
Let's not imitate others. Let's find ourselves and be ourselves.
