The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

January 4Who Are You to Be Great?

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.—“Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.”—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson—Self-Reliance (1841)

What, then, is it to be understood? Is it to have what you are doing, saying, thinking, and feeling fit into someone else's consistent view of the world?

Emerson felt that to be great was to be different, but he also knew that different was a more difficult way to go. An impressive lot—Socrates, Jesus, Luther, Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton—were all labeled different and persecuted long before their ideas would be branded genius.

Different for the sake of difference may not make you great, but if your ideas today are not causing some to question your sanity just a bit, you may not be trying hard enough.

Different is often misunderstood, and those willing to change the world may eventually face the label of different, or weird, or crazy, or, the ...