Ordinary Inspiration

What I am about to write came from a specific conversation, but the ideas apply to life as a whole. Many times, people ask authors where they come up with their stories from, or they get impressed by a storyteller's imagination.

Good writers make good stories, right?

I'm not so sure about that.

Life is what makes stories. Speakers and writers just take the time to notice them and tell them over. But I think more people should notice such things.

I was in a sort of speech class where everyone had to give a two-minute inspirational speech. We were told that we should speak as though we had two minutes to pass over some lesson or piece of inspiration to the whole world. Yet so many people's stories were about death and tragedy and hardship. This bothered me. Such stories can be extremely inspiring - and those particular ones were - but I decided I really did not want to go that route. There is what to be taken from all moments in life, and even the most ordinary thing or moment or person can be inspiring. The inspiration gained from major events, like tragedies or difficulties, shouldn't end with and be defined solely by that event. It should be then carried on into the rest of your life, like a catalyst for actually seeing the things in your life. The ordinary days in our lives are not filler in between the major events. We spend most of our lives having ordinary days. Would you really want to see most of your life as filler? Our ordinary lives have a greater significance than we give them credit for.

That's why I picked something more ordinary to speak about: a moment of ordinary friendship. I think we - general we - need to learn to actually see the things in our lives and realize their value, even - or maybe especially - the non-cataclysmic ones.

Too many people spoke that night - and too many people in general say this - about how they regret not showing a person they care before that person died or they regret not speaking to their father for five years or not resolving a fight with someone or not paying enough attention to someone, etc. etc. etc. And I really think we shouldn't wait to have those regrets. Relationships should be treated with care, respect, and love, not because you're afraid you might lose them but because you have them now. When things are really great, or just average, we should still appreciate those people in our lives who we really care about, for no reason other than that we care about them. It shouldn't always have to be the big stuff that wake us up and say, "Hello you idiot, remember you care about this person?" Why should it have to get to that point? Why do we take people for granted? We never should. Not every moment has to be heavy with inspiration, but that's just it. Inspiration doesn't have to be heavy. It's just that feeling of, "I really appreciate having this person in my life. It's making me really happy right now and that feeling of happiness is giving me a positive attitude towards life."

Sometimes, the best moments are sitting in a car with someone, or walking with someone, or just being in the same room as someone, and not saying anything, just thinking, but knowing that you're with someone you really care about, and who truly cares about you, and how it doesn't matter that you're not having a deep conversation or going anywhere exceptionally exciting or doing anything spectacularly life-changing. At a certain point, you don't need those big things in order to have truly important moments. The importance doesn't lie in what you're doing or saying. It lies in the bond you have with your family and friends, no matter what.

What I really mean is - I like to recognize those smaller moments. During the speeches that night, I didn't like how everyone seemed to juxtapose "inspiring" with "tragedy." Tragedy can lead to inspiring stories - but we can't live our lives off of tragedy or major obstacles. We have to live our lives off of our lives and the regular people in them. Because to us, those "regular people" are the most special people we know.

Hero Business

"What I like best - apart from running and shouting and jokes and fighting - is being things."

"Being things?" Mr. Lynn asked. "Like what?" He sounded wistful and mystified.

"Making things like heroes up with other people, then being them," Polly explained. "I'll show you. Pretend you're not really you at all. In real life you're really something quite different."

"What am I?" Mr. Lynn said obligingly.

It would have been better if he had been like Nina and said he would not be friends unless she told him. Without any prodding, Polly's invention went dead on her. She could only think of the most ordinary things. "You keep an ironmonger's shop," she said rather desperately. To make this seem better, she added, "A very good ironmonger's shop in a very nice town. And your name is really Thomas Piper. That's because of your name - Tom, Tom, the piper's son - you know."

Mr. Lynn smiled. "Oddly enough, my father used to play the flute professionally. Yes. I sell nails and dustbins and hearth-brushes. What else?"

"Hot-water bottles and spades and buckets," said Polly. "Every morning you go out and hang them round your door, and stack wheelbarrows and watering cans on the pavement."

"Where passers-by can bark their shins on them. I see," said Mr. Lynn. "And what else? Am I happy in my work?"

"Not quite happy," Polly said. He was playing up so well that her imagination began to work properly. "You're a bit bored, but that doesn't matter, because the shop is only what everyone thinks you do. Really you're secretly a hero, a very strong one who's immortal--"

"Immortal?" Mr. Lynn said, startled.

"Well nearly," said Polly. "You'd live for hundreds of years if someone doesn't kill you in one of your battles. Your name is really - um - Tan Coul and I'm your assistant."

"Are you my assistant in the shop as well, or just when I'm being a hero?" asked Mr. Lynn.

"No I'm me," said Polly. "I'm a learner hero. I come with you whenever you go out on a job."

"Then you'll have to live within call," Mr. Lynn pointed out. "Where is this shop of mine? Here in Middleton? It had better be, so that I can pick you up easily when a job comes up."

"No, it's on Stow-on-the-Water," Polly said decidedly. Pretending was like that. Things seemed to make themselves up, once you got going.

[...]

Here, they both looked round, Polly was not sure why. The boy who had been at the funeral was standing behind them, still very smooth and neat in spite of the wind. Maybe he had snorted. At any rate, he was looking very scornful.

"Oh hello, Seb," Mr. Lynn said. "You got out at last, then?"

"Only because it's over," the boy said contemptuously.

"Is it? Thank goodness for that!" Mr. Lynn said.

Instead of answering, the boy simply turned round and walked away. Mr. Lynn's face, Polly thought, showed just a trace of hurt feelings.

"What a horrible, rude boy!" Polly exclaimed, hoping it was loud enough for the boy to hear as he walked.

[...]

"Now, what about my life selling hardware in Stow-on-the-Water? Do I live alone?"

"No, I live there too, when I get there," said Polly. "But of course there's your wife, Edna--"

"No there isn't," Mr. Lynn said. He said it quietly and calmly, as if someone had asked him if there was any butter and he had opened the fridge and found none. But Polly could tell he meant it absolutely.

"Well - there has to be," she argued. "There's someone - I know her name is Edna - who bosses you round, and makes your life a misery, and thinks you're stupid, and doesn't allow you enough money, and makes you do all the work--"

"My landlady," said Mr. Lynn.

"No," said Polly.

"Sister, then," said Mr. Lynn. "How about a sister?"

"I don't know about sisters!" Polly protested.

They wandered round the overgrown garden, arguing about it. In the end, Polly found she had to give way about Edna and make her a sister after all.

[...]

Dear Mr. Lynn,

Your letter is good and funny but you are not like Mr. Piper reely. You should have killed the giant like you said I said. Now I will anser your questiuns. You are right heros always have a weapun but you do not need a sord, you have your axe. You need a horse. St. Gorge had a horse for killing draguns. You got Edna right only not nasty enuff. She nags. She is so upposed to Mr. Piper reading books that the pore man has to rap them in the cuvers of yusefull books called "A short histury of nales" for the big ones and "Iron list" for the small ones and read them secritally wile Edna watches the telly.

I hope you are well.

Polly was going to finish here, when she remembered Seb again. A new thought struck her. She sucked her pen awhile, then wrote:

Mr. Piper has a nefue, Edna is his Mum, called Leslie. He is a horrid boy and gets scaunfull every time Mr. Piper is nice to him. Leslie is ashamed of Mr. Piper, he thinks he is mad. He did not see the giant.

That is all. By for now.

Polly

[...]

The music played, and they went on discussing Edna. Before long they knew exactly the pinched shape of her face and the sound of her nasty, yapping voice. Polly said that the stuffing was coming out of Edna's dressing gown because she was too mean to buy another, and she only let poor Mr. Piper have just enough money each month to buy tobacco. "He had to give up smoking to buy books," she said.

"I feel for him," said Mr. Lynn. "I had to do that to buy my good cello. What is Edna saving her money for?"

"To give to Leslie," said Polly.

"Oh the awful Leslie," said Mr. Lynn. "From what you said in your letter, I see him as dark, sulky, and rather thick-set. Utterly spoiled, of course. Is Edna saving to buy him a motor bike?"

"When he's old enough. She gives him anything he wants," said Polly. "She's just bought him an earring shaped like a skull with diamonds for eyes."

[...]

"Are we going anywhere else?"

Mr. Lynn gave his gulp of a laugh. "Stow-on-the-Water," he said rather triumphantly. "Did you know it's a real place? I thought, if you agree, we could go there and look for hardware shops."

Polly thought that was a marvelous idea.

"Good," said Mr. Lynn. "Though I know there really is no such shop, I almost believe it's real. I can see it, and even smell the beastly smell in Edna's kitchen if I close my eyes."

[...]

Stow-on-the-Water, when they finally found it, was made of the same yellow horse-colored stone as Mary Fields' farm...

"Now," said Mr. Lynn, "to look for ironmongers."

They looked up. And there it was, facing them across the square. Thomas Piper Hardware. There were shiny folding ladders propped outside and stacks of new yellow wood labeled 'Do It Yourself.' The whole shop had a new, clean look, most definitely modern. But it was there. Thomas Piper Hardware. The discovery shook them both, more than they had bargained for. Polly looked up at Mr. Lynn, and Mr. Lynn looked down at Polly, and his eyes were as round and amazed behind his glasses as they had been when he first saw the horse.

"What do you make of that!" he said.

"I don't know," said Polly. "I don't--like it somehow."

They stood and stared at the shop. They stood until Polly began to shiver in the wind again.

"We're not being very brave, are we?" said Mr. Lynn. "We can do better than this. Come on."

They sauntered toward the shop. Polly wandered away to the left, pretending she was going somewhere else. Then Mr. Lynn wandered away to the right. But it was only a short distance. In no time they were standing beside the shiny ladders, looking at a display of bright orange jugs, bowls, and lawnmowers in the window beyond.

"We ought to buy something," Mr. Lynn whispered. He sounded nearly panic-stricken. "Think of something we can ask for."

"Tools?" said Polly.

"Yes, people can always use more tools," Mr. Lynn said thankfully.

They went in.

[...]

From here they saw there was a lady sitting at a desk near the door that say 'Way Out,' an ordinary, smallish lady with a nice, nervous face and fluffy mouse-brown hair. She was busily doing sums on a scrap of paper. But she raised her head as they came up the corridor, without really looking at them, and said, "We'll have to reorder those electric kettles. They've not come."

Somehow it was clear she was saying this to Mr. Lynn. His eyes went round again and met Polly's, almost desperately. Then he managed to say, "I - I beg your pardon?"

The lady's fluffy head shot round to look at them. Her face crumpled with dismay. "Oh, I'm sorry, sir! I quite thought you were Mr. Piper! You have just his walk." Her eyes remained on Mr. Lynn as if they found it impossible to move away. Amazement grew through the crumples in her face. "You really do look such a lot like him!" she said. "Were you looking for something in particular?"

Under her eyes Mr. Lynn's face went pale and rather shiny. He swallowed - Polly saw the lump in his throat surge. "Just - just a screwdriver or so," he said rather stickily.

"Down at the end," said the lady. And suddenly she shouted. Her voice filled the silent shop and made Polly jump. "Leslie!" she yelled. "Les! Come and help this gentleman and young lady find a screwdriver!"

Rubber shoes squeaked at the back of the shop. Polly's head and Mr. Lynn's turned that way, fascinated, to see a boy of about Polly's age shoot cheerfully into sight. He was not dark He had quite a mop of fairish hair. But he did wear an earring, and that earring was a little silver skull with glittering green stones for eyes.

[...]

[Tom Lynn] wrote [Polly] a letter a week later.

The thing I hadn't bargained for about hero business,

the important part said

is how terribly embarrassing it is. I wished the floor would open in Piper's shop. I squirmed. I realized in one blinding moment that when they speak of heroes having "iron nerve," they do not mean they can spring forward and seize the bridle of a wild horse. That is child's play - sorry, Polly, I mean quite easy by comparison really. No, what they mean by "iron nerve" is the same as "a thick skin." You have to learn not to notice how silly you feel.

Polly thought sadly that she understood.

You meen,

she wrote back,

that you want to stop playing hero binis. I do not blame you. It is up to you, just say.

She got a letter back at once.

Dear Hero,

I didn't mean that at all. I just meant that being a hero took a different kind of courage than I had thought. No, I am hooked on hero business. Now I have got over squirming, I want to know if everything we make up is going to come true the same way. Must stop. This concert is being broadcast.

Tom

[...]

"I--" Polly tried to say. Everyone in the room must know what a fool she had been. She could see faces turning to her, dimly, smiling kindly and pityingly.

Polly could take no more. She put her teacup down on the small table near her chair and then backed away from it with her hands stretched out to push it from her, as if the teacup were her stupidity. And that was a silly way to behave too. The people who had been looking at her were all turning away, embarrassed to look.

"Think," said Laurel, "if someone was hanging round you, pestering and sighing, for all the life you had--"

"Oh all right! Don't go on!" Polly cried out. "I didn't mean - Of course I'll forget him! Just leave me alone!"

Things began to go dim after that. Polly remembered sitting for a while, bolt upright and staring at nothing, wishing she could leave, or that she could crawl into a hole and die of shame. She remembered her relief when Seb came and said it was time to go now. Polly got up and went with him into the hall with the jointed staircase and the Ali Baba jars, where things were already fading - bleached away by her shame, she thought then - when she heard Seb say, "Hey! Now, look here, Tom, you're not supposed - Oh, well -"

Polly looked round to find that Tom had come out into the hall, too. "Goodbye, Polly," he said...

And that was really all she remembered. As soon as she left the house, her memories started to run single again.

And plain, and dull, she thought. She had done it to herself. And deserved it all, even being engaged to Seb, for not having the sense to remember something Tom had said himself: that being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel.

~From Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones

Respect

Respect is like
The way flowers grow up
Towards the rain
And rain trickles up
Through the roots,
The way cliffs of the ravine
Reflect each other's majesty
In their clear mirror faces
So that each mountain seems
A hundred miles deeper,
The way birds sing to the clouds
In their mellifluous warbles
And clouds blanket the birds
In their pillow-like cottons,
The way the Earth circles the Sun
Declaring all its brazen splendor
And the Sun warms the Earth
Lifting it upon golden smiles.

Intuition

- An Exercise In Expression From Once Upon A Time -

I sit here and try to write a poem, and I wonder, as I am forced to begin - with only five minutes left to class - if I shouldn't have used "compose" instead of "write" because "compose" sounds stronger, more poetic, more like music, and yet more serious, and so less in the business of trampoline-ing me off to nonsensical heights. So I leave it as "write" because that feels right, though don't know where to go from there, and I stare at each word as it blurs and runs into the next, as the rules muddle to a puddle of rainbow while over it I splash towards that fantastical composition played on the Olympic-sized bandstand growing in the blue-green grass, the musicians like a rolling sea of sunflowers. Their magic-wand instruments spray glitters of red and green and yellow and blue, sparking the heavens into morning as I run through the air, my legs cartwheeling on the wind. I don't even have to touch the ground to move - how freeing that is! It no longer matters whether I use "write" or "compose" or "construct" or "create" or any word at all because I fly through a place called Intuition, where everyone sees me as my entire self, that unique paradox that is me, that kind of knowing that one knows except when one is asked what they know - and where it doesn't matter that "they" is the wrong kind of grammar there - because such knowing transcends words. In this place that is truly mine, I pass by The Phantom Tollbooth's orchestra which plays the sun's journey - its rising, its setting, its middle-of-the-sky sojourn - only now it's still morning and the twitters of the flute make me want to spin and twirl and dance. I give a schoolgirl's skip to a cowboy seated on the concrete steps of a paint-peeled house with a worn wooden porch. He wears a wide white hat that - if you squint - could be made out of hardened snow - and chews on a toothpick that - if you tilt your head - could perhaps be a broken piece of hay. He strums his dirt-stained banjo and calls me Suzannah - with a Z, not an S, and that's part of Intuition too, knowing these things - and then I am Suzannah, with my hair in two braids tied with red ribbon and my dress earthy-green, my shoes too dusty to be black anymore. I step softly aground and give him a curtsy. He gives me a candied apple. It looks like a sticky balloon on a stick and I trot away licking it, the finale of noontime's march lifting me back in the air. And now it is after noon - when the band from the field plays the sun's intermission, a soft hum of nap time for the toddlers and the old. I slow to a walk as I come to the village square patched with yellow-green grass worn thin with wear. An aging woman is crying there. I instinctively know (don’t forget where I am) that she lives in a show, and by lives I mean lives. Every day she must act as a weather-worn granny or provocative maid or a cold-hearted nanny – or drunken schoolteacher (that is today’s) – the poor woman’s life is polluted with plays. She knows her parts better than she knows herself, for she’d never been asked to perform as herself. But the Love Interest – that’s who she’d love to be cast – but her prime, as all primes end up – past. A curious thing – she can’t think of my name. And, come to think of it, I feel the same. My name – what’s my name? Alice, she decides, and it’s true. No more braids, my dark hair hangs neatly-brushed down my back and I’m holding a tea-cup and blue-flowered saucer. How confusing! I place it upon the stage and take my leave of the old woman who lives in a show, for she makes me tremble. When – tiptoeing in is the orchestra again! Have you ever seen an orchestra tiptoe? All in blue and silver uniforms and their march slightly stooped in a hushed sort of way, the warm gwee gwee of their violins yawning violet rays as the sun circles westward and the cello hums a father’s slow lullaby, stretching orange ‘cross the sky. The clouds blush at the nighttime wooing of the French Horn and I wear purple pajamas, illuminated in the waking moon. In struts the cowboy, plucking his banjo to the plunks of pink hiding behind the reddening sun. There are dancers waving sashes and dinner-time picnickers with blankets and baskets. The conductor, brandishing his silver baton, waves it and makes everything freeze – the people, the music, the sunset, and me. Then he points that baton at my purple nightclothes and declares, “Maggie, compose.” Compose. Compose? Does he mean write? Write what? Music? A poem? Who knows? Intuition? What is my name again? I blink and I’m back and – have I written prose?

Do I know anything anymore?

Changes

Change is difficult. It's like I have to reorient the different things and people in my life in order to both keep the old and make room for the new. This is both because of what is happening in my life and what is happening in the lives of others. Some of that reorienting can really be kind of wrenching. But I guess no matter what, certain things of the past will always remain with you (with me), even if they do not seem as present anymore.

I wanted to write a whole post about change, but I find that I can't. In any case, I'll leave you with this scene from The Lion King that I have always liked:

Writing As It Was

A long time ago, speech was the main mode of communication. Few people knew how to read, let alone write. Those who were literate were held in high esteem, and only works of great significance were actually written down. Everything else was oral.

Even once most laypeople knew how to read and write, they wrote with care. Letters were often well thought-out chronicles of a person's life and thoughts. They were things which were treasured. Writing was not cheap, either. Ink cost money, paper cost money - a person used these things prudently and conscientiously.

Today, we approach writing differently. Everyone writes. Everyone sends text messages and IMs, people write status messages and emails in shorthand. Whole words are a thing of the past, grammar is ancient history, and how much thought actually goes into most texts and emails? How personally can we actually take a thing of writing addressed to us? How much care goes into those words?

Everyone these days seems to have a blog. The entire world has turned into one big party of journalism. Some aspects of blogging are an imperative part of what brings society together: open communication. The more we are able to communicate with one another and - even more important - the more we are able to actually listen to one another, the greater our understanding will be of those different from ourselves.

Hirhurim linked to an article that has some fair critiques of the blogging world, but that also makes an excellent reminder about what good writing ought to be:

"Writers who expect sustained public inspection tend to think long and hard before publishing. Readers who assume writers have thought long and hard tend to read with intense attention. This leads, in general, to good writing, good reading, and good thinking. Such an environment is a precondition for vigilant citizenship and a civil society vibrant with critical intelligence. What is more, this environment disciplines speedy, prolific, lively writers, ultimately to their own advantage.

Of course I have no idea what policies, programs, or movements could plausibly revive what Postman calls the Typographic Mind. The only solution I know is a slow, personal one: It is the painful discipline of changing my own detestable habits of inattention, sloppiness, and waggish opportunism in daily conversation, whether written or oral, and of writing with the assumption that my reader's attention is generous and his time valuable.

[...]

Certainly, indolence, cowardice, or vanity can hide behind pretended reverence for words, but irreverence seems quite obviously the more pressing danger. A little care and humility is in order, for words are the main vehicle of culture and science, and the vital medium of a free republic. They bind the living and the dead, God and man into a communion of love and knowledge. Words are not lifeblood, except in the sense that they are."

We clearly approach the written word differently today than we did centuries - or even merely decades - ago. But perhaps it's good to remember that writing is a thing which used to be shown respect, that reverence was given to those who were good at it, and that thought and care used to go into every stroke of ink on the page. Maybe we can still treat the written word that way now.

Self

Sometimes a person might behave in ways he or she regrets - ways that are not representative of who he or she is. Sometimes a person portrays an image of him or herself to the world that is not who that person truly is. This can be frustrating. What's even more frustrating is letting such a thing bother you when really you ought to just go on behaving the way you feel you should. Eventually, people will either get it or not get it, but you'll know you're still you. Even if the whole world is blind to who you are, you know who you are. If you are true to yourself, you have the right to stand tall and look people in the eye because you are not hiding anything. You are presenting to the world your true, majestic self.

Hirhurim linked a dvar Torah by R' Twerski that I think is worthwhile for everyone to read. Excerpt:

Today, we vote in blocs and think in blocs. We are influenced by the mass media, major corporations and by the leaders of educational institutions. Indeed, the educational system has been criticized as forcing all students into the belly of the bell curve, resulting in mediocrity as well as uniformity. We yield to whatever fad prevails. Our minds are made up by everyone except ourselves.

There are indeed rules and principles by which we must all abide, but there is ample room within these parameters to be oneself. What is my goal in life? What do I think happiness is? What are my unique abilities that I should develop? What kind of lifestyle do I want?

Rebbe Shalom Shachna, the father of the Rebbe of Rhizin, married the granddaughter of Rebbe Nachum of Chernoble. The latter’s chassidim did not approve of Rebbe Shalom Shachna’s ways, which did not conform to the Chernoble practices, and complained to Rebbe Nachum. When Rebbe Nachum asked his grandson why he was not conforming, the latter answered with a parable.

The egg of a duck got mixed up with the eggs of a hen. When the chicks hatched, the mother hen took them for a walk. When they passed by a stream, the duckling jumped in. The mother hen panicked, shouting, “Come out of there! You’ll drown!” The duckling responded, “Have no fear, mother. I know how to swim.”

Rebbe Nachum told his chassidim, “Leave him alone. He knows what he is doing.” Thence came the dynasty of Rhizin, famed for its uniqueness.

Listen to the words of Rav Shlomo Wolbe. “Every individual, like Adam, is an entire world. The existence of billions of people does not detract from each person’s uniqueness. Every individual is a one-time phenomenon.

Every person should know, “I, with my strengths and talents, facial features and personality traits, am unique in the world. Among all those living today and in all past generations, there was no one like me, nor will there ever be anyone like me to the end of time. Hashem has sent me into the world with a unique mission that no one else can fulfill, only I in my one-time existence” (Alei Shur vol.2 p.71),

And again, “How distant from reverence for Hashem is the person who seeks only the approval of others, and is ready to imitate whatever he sees others do.” (Alei Shur vol.1 p.132).

God created us all with sechel, intelligence. With that intelligence, we have the ability to make decisions and form opinions. If I cannot be certain of myself and my own decisions and opinions, how can I be certain of anything? We have to take the time to strip away the voices and opinions of everyone around us and really figure out who we are, what we want, where we are, and where we wish to go.

I recently read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. One of the characters in the book, Howard Roark, discusses the concept of Second-Handers. Second-Handers are people who live not motivated by what they truly want but by how they wish to be seen by others:

They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They’re concerned only with people. They don’t ask: “Is this true?” They ask: “Is this what others think is true?” Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egoists. You don’t think through another’s brain and you don’t work through another’s hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation—anchored to nothing.

[...]

After centuries of being pounded with the doctrine that altruism is the ultimate ideal, men have accepted it in the only way it could be accepted. By seeking self-esteem through others. By living second-hand. And it has opened the way for every kind of horror. It has become the dreadful form of selfishness which a truly selfish man couldn’t have conceived. [...] Look at everyone around us. You’ve wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he’s ever held a truly personal desire, he’d find the answer. He’d see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He’s not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion—prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can’t say about a single thing: “This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me.”

If one spends her life overly concerned with what others think, she will never get to learn what she thinks. In essence, she will never really exist as a unique individual - only as the member of a throng, of a collective opinion. Then one day, she will wake up and wonder, "Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? What have I done in this life and why have I done it?" And there will be no answers. Until that point, she has not existed without others informing her how to exist. She has not lived as an individual.

We have to value our own worth and feel confident in the competence of our own minds. And if you make a mistake, even a big one, absorb it, make it part of you so you can learn from it and understand how to behave in the future. Recognizing something as a mistake means you understand proper ways to behave. Take confidence in that. You cannot erase, but you can build. Mistakes are precious - they show us the paths we should be careful around next time, they help us understand others who are as imperfect as we are, and they help guide us towards more correct behaviors and decisions in the future.

You are a being created by God. By putting yourself down, you are putting down one of God's creations. If God created you, there must be worth to you. A good friend once said, "Only you determine YOUR self worth. That's why it's called self."

We're all unique and we all have something substantial to offer. Remember that. :)