Fight to be yourself

“To be nobody-but-yourself? In a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else? Means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”   E. E. Cummings

What this quotes means is that is it not easy to be yourself, to be unique, or to think differently. This is a world which promotes conformity, where you are expected to play a certain role, to be a certain person, to be like everyone else. To conform and accept what everyone wants you to be is easy.

Being true to yourself, being different than what the world expects of you is extremely difficult. You are not just fighting an inner struggle, questioning if staying true to yourself is the right path, but also fighting the world, which wants you to be the same as every other type of person, and to think like everyone else. This is not a fight which you win and move on, but a fight which stays with you your entire life, no matter how successful you become, or how many times you prove them wrong. That is why it is the hardest battle.

The people who stand out throughout history are the ones who fought against conformity, who were different than everyone else, and who refused to accept the worlds view of who they should be. Some examples are Leonardo Da Vinci,  Alexander the Great, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Frank Lloyd Wright, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Thomas Alva Edison, Christopher Columbus, Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, Peter the Great and many others.