self_reliance silentbob 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; and through the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but thru his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till... trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you; the society of your contemporaries, the connectoin of events. I remember an answer which when quite young i was prompted to make to a valued doctrines of the churhc. On my saying, "What have i to do with the sacredness of traditions, if i live wholly from within?" my friend suggest-- "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if i am the devil's child, i will live then from the devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right way is after my constituion, the only wrong what is against it. AH then exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be musunderstood. Misunderstood! it is a right fool's word. is it so bad then to be misunderstood? To be great is to be misunderstood. Ralph Waldo Emerson 010104 ... Miner I can always rely on myself, ok so i cant tell you what i can rely on myself to do, but i can rely on myself to do something, or even do nothing, depending on the situation... but at least i can rely on myself to take some form of action no matter how little it may be. 010609 ... unhinged Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of my favorites in the whole world. i wanted to go to prom with him but he told me that i should go by myself naked. 010609 ... Aimee I know a few people at work who need to aquire this ability... fuckin' idiots 010729 ... unique butterfly the only thing i can trust... sometimes not even that... 020412 ... Dafremen Sure, if you want cheap, easy brownie points, whip out the Ralph Waldo Emerson. Very inspired S'bob...yea real nice. 020412 ... silentbob i wrote that a year ago after i read it in my american lit class senior year of highschool and actually felt some kind of human emotion for the first time in quite a while. it actually was something i read that moved me. something i havent felt while being on here in a long time 020420 ... misstree a hard path to live by, but worth all the gold in the world. i always associate emerson with ayn_rand, though she has to be taken with a grain of salt... too hard a line with her, and you lose your humanity. 020421 ... thunderbuck ram If nobody else can rely on me, why the hell should I? 040916 ... dafremen There was a time when folks would say "Here, look at what I have done." Whether it was raise a crop, paint a picture, modify a car, sew a quilt, build a shelf, write a story..it didn't matter. People were proud of their skill set. That was their guaranteed riches. No one could devalue them. No one could take them away or tax them into oblivion. We used to seek after skills. Now we seek after money. And when we do seek after skills, it is in seeking after money do we often stop when we find it. Seeking after skills, we constantly sought to improve ourselves as a people (in general.) Seeking after money, we can find a comfortable niche and stay there. In fact, the dynamics of risk encourage it. Pioneers made do with what they had. We give up more of our lives to dull routine in order to have what we want. And we are taught to want plenty. So we hunker down where whatever plenty we can find is most plentiful and dig into a routine that will bring a steady stream of other people's product and service routines into and out of our lives. All of us in our loops..our lives like little time space donuts touching the space and time of other donuts..remotely..often coldly..through money. The evolutionary process does not appear to be a static process. It does not favor the cold particularly. It likes change and change happens most rapidly where there is a warmth to things. Not some crappy shoe glued together by sad, disgruntled, underpaid workers. YOUR shoes made by you. Or made by him. Or made by her. And a whole different bunch of shoes the next town over. Shoes with warmth. Shoes with character. Every one a bit different. Every one made just for you. Maybe its not shoes. Maybe its a pie. People have to travel for miles to get that one pie that no one would have known about. Who knew you made such a great pie? No one. Because, well you always bought the pies and never thought to try to make one. Besides, you were too tired and busy from working to make someone else's life luxurious. Damn. Tough luck world. No pie. : ( Or..try to make that pie. Learn to build a shoe. Start with a sandal. OR a flip flop. Make a kite, a candle, a magnet, a meal, a mess..it doesn't matter. We get better with every attempt; build perspective, have more to talk about, gain confidence, pass time usefully, become more useful to ourselves and others. Instead of a nation that says, "I want that", What if we taught our people to say "I can do this myself"? Whether it turns out that they can or they can't, those are the words of a free person. Oh and my verify was kfuc..so close. 160410 what's it to you? who go blather from