The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

June 7You Are Invincible

Nature still wore her motherly smile, and seemed to promise room, not only for those favored or cursed with the qualities best adapting for the strifes of competition, but for the delicate, the thoughtful, even the indolent or eccentric. She did not say, Fight or starve; nor even, Work or cease to exist; but, merely showing that the apple was a finer fruit than the wild crab, gave both room to grow in the garden.

Margaret Fuller—At Home and Abroad; or, Things and Thoughts in America and Europe (1856)

The example of self-reliance that exists in plain sight out our window is an often visited theme in the transcendentalist literature. Thoreau was the most overt; go live in the woods, simplify, and eat what you forage could sum up his relationship with nature. But Fuller and Emerson also used nature as both a metaphor for self-reliance and as a way to attempt to shed light on their belief that somehow we are all connected—something we might find more scientifically explained in the study of quantum physics today.

It's hard to read the passage from today's reading and not to imagine an entrepreneur in their struggle “with the qualities best adapting for the strifes of competition.” But how often is it that how we think about our life is what creates the real competition?

If we begin with the notion that there is room for all our dreams to grow and that nature will provide the opportunity to those who ask, our job is to ask. Nature is a lesson in perfect ...