The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

September 22Everyday Truth

In a clear autumnal day we may see, here and there, a massed white cloud edged with a blazing brightness against a blue sky, and now and then a dark pine swinging its top in the wind …; but who can note the shifting and untiring play of the leaves of the wood, and their passing hues, when each seems a living thing full of sensations, and happy in its rich attire? A sound, too, of universal harmony is in our ears, and a wide-spread beauty before our eyes, which we cannot define; yet a joy is in our hearts. Our delight increases in these, day after day, the longer we give ourselves to them, till at last we become, as it were, a part of the existence without us.

Richard Henry Dana—“Kean's Acting” (1950)

Dana seems to explain, in somewhat flowery language, an appreciation of nature. But he was actually describing the nature of character.

We all know someone whose character, or being as it were, affects us at once. But then upon further contact, they grow on us imperceptibly … “till at last we become, as it were, a part of the existence without us.”

Certainly there is something warm about them; they genuinely express interest in us, but underneath they inhabit a natural unwavering quality. They give us something new, honest, and filled with their nature.

This is the quality of self-reliance. This is everyday truth. This is a nature that is hard to name, but it is free—they do only what they intend to do because that's what they want. There's little ...