If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

– Henry David Thoreau

I can only speak for myself, but I feel enormous pressure from “the world” to conform.  If only I would be what it expects me to be, love whom it expects me to love, think the way it wants me to think, then all it has to offer is available to me.  The only problem is, I adore the dreamers! I exalt those enlightened spirits who inhabit the fringe of possibility, revel in the idea itself, and want to bask in the warm light that unconventional lends to my life.  This leaves me mostly…unaccepted; a terrible price to pay for being unique.  Edward Young said, “We are all born originals-why is it so many of us die copies?”  I’ll tell you why, because convention exerts enormous power to maintain firm control over us.  We are conditioned to conform at an early age, to “color inside the lines” to be and do what everybody wants or expects.  Conformity is not coded into our DNA. In fact, our continued evolutionary continuum proves quite the opposite.  We honor the creative ones, the entrepreneurs, the gifted members of our society rather than accept them.  In so doing, we add our own personal energy to the thought serving convention’s controlling interest:  “…without proper control, anarchy will emerge. We must control the population while utilizing the gifts of those who wrest power from the mob to launch new trajectories, but we must never accept as a species, the delight of being different.  To do so imperils the very structure of the world we have built.”

The “drummer” inside me has cadenced silently long enough. Perhaps now is the time for each of us as unique creations, manifestations of divine light, to emerge en masse and take what rightfully belongs to us:  ourselves.  It takes courage to challenge such powerful thought, but the time has come for us, as the true guardians of our own creative nature, to regard such action as not only beneficial, but essential to our survival.  We must give ourselves permission to love: ourselves first, others next, and then draw from that love to build a more powerful, beautiful, and unique world in which to live.  We ought to not only accept those who are different, but glorify them.  We must inculcate in every corner of our person the desire to uncover the unique and precious insights we were gifted to deliver to the world.   Imagine the world we could build…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRhq-yO1KN8