Nobody But Yourself June 1, 2014
Posted by nrhatch in Mindfulness, People, Writing & Writers.trackback
All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was.
I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory.
I was naïve.
I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with:
That I am nobody but myself.
~ Ralph Ellison
Author of Invisible Man
Aah . . . that’s better!
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Beautiful quote! Great start to my day!
Have a good one, Kate! His thoughts remind me of the prose poem, Desiderata:
https://nrhatch.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/desiderata-desired-things/
And Goethe’s ~ Trust yourself and you will know how to live.
It IS a beautiful quote! I am getting started late today.. 🙂 I am still thinking over your post on sarcasm.
Morning, Pix. Your comment prompted a thought in me about sarcasm ~> there are some people (like my brothers) that I am often sarcastic with, and others that I rarely use sarcasm on.
I expect it’s because I know who will “get me” and who might not.
Ralph Ellison is a smart, smart man. Thanks for sharing.
When we plug in to our inner power, we can move mountains . . . and scale canyons! 😎
Truth!
Huzzah!
Love this, Nancy!
Yay! Life is much simpler when we start relying on our internal compass.
Nancy, you are unique!
Thanks, GM. You too!
Great reminder Nancy!
It’s a great quote . . . especially the subtle sarcasm at the end. Yup. He’s the ONLY ONE who didn’t get the memo.
It does sometimes seem everyone else knows what we should know but don’t. But then age intervenes and we learn the truth…nobody really knows much more than we do.
Exactly. Most of us are stumbling around in the dark looking for the light switch. 😎
This gave me unexpected goosebumps! I can identify with the search and realization I can only look within for answers.
I think it is a realization that we’re born with . . . but we see that our survival depends on pleasing parents/ caretakers/ teachers so we start looking to them for clues on how to behave and lose touch with our inner GPS.
And then comes Peer Pressure, interviewing for jobs, pleasing the boss, snagging a mate, etc. No wonder many of us lose our way.
I love the saying , go back to being who you were before everyone told you who to be.
Yes! That’s exactly it, Suzi. Much of socialization is aimed at getting us to conform to the norm so that we become predictable and more easily manipulated by consensus.
If we want to honor our uniqueness, we need to wash off that mud.
Fantastic quote, Nancy. Whenever I see quotes from Ralph Ellison now it reminds me of The Book Thief (not sure if you’ve read the book or seen the movie but I really liked it) 😉
Loved the movie, haven’t read the book ~ I expected not to like it as much as I did.
I was just headed around to your place with a book recommendation:
http://www.amazon.com/Euphoria-Lily-King/dp/0802122558/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t
It’s not released yet. And I haven’t read it. But as I looked over the reviews from the Vine Voices, I thought of you.
I didn’t recall the book from The Book Thief, so I checked on Wiki ~ it’s “The Invisible Man” by H.G. Wells:
In the 2013 film “The Book Thief” the protagonist, a girl growing up in Nazi Germany, saves a copy of “The Invisible Man” from a Nazi book burning and on several scenes reads aloud parts of it. H. G. Wells was an author on the banned authors list during Nazi Germany.
Ellison’s “Invisible Man” was published after the end of WWII.
Thank you! I’m heading over now to take a look 😀
It sounds like a great story, based loosely on Margaret Mead. And, while I know you can’t judge a book by its cover, I love the cover art.
How true. A few days ago, I was searching for validation. I went to person A, they said, “Blah.” I went to person B, they said, “Blah, blah.” I came home and told myself, “You’ve got to stop this. Go with your heart!” So this post resonates.
Yay! it’s great when we realize that “they” don’t always have the answers that we need to hear.
Another post that you might enjoy:
https://nrhatch.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/the-awakening-by-sonny-carroll/
A wonderful quote and I love the photo, too. There is freedom in those words, and I have often wondered why it is somehow easier to accept that others are “themselves” and to appreciate that, and yet it can take a whole lot longer to accept who we are. Who we truly are! I really appreciate the focus, Nancy. I need frequent reminders. 🙂
Glad it struck the right chord with you, Debra. On an Intellectual level, we may “get it” . . . yet still need frequent reminders to put that knowledge into daily practice. Not surprising given that we are socialized to be part of the tribe, to go along & get along, to fit in, NOT to stand out.