http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/fromm.html

“So, over a mere 500 years, the idea of the individual, with individual thoughts, feelings, moral conscience, freedom, and responsibility, came into being. but with individuality came isolation, alienation, and bewilderment. Freedom is a difficult thing to have, and when we can we tend to flee from it.”

interesting.. i think i’ll read it.

ITA, this was a management problem. The followers did what they were supposed to do. I think followers get a bad rap, and leaders get too much credit.

Thanks for the thought…

Regarding this gentleman’s quote:
“There is nothing new under the sun, just rehashed ideas”.

So it has been done.
Just because we are realizing or acknowledging an idea that others have figured out — years before or days before — does not make the discovery for the individual any less special. It means we are now as smart as they are, maybe even smarter. Perhaps we ‘arrived’ with a unique and interesting twist that paves a road, which will be more easily traveled for others that follow behind us. Perhaps even, the next realization that someone will have, will be smarter than the one I had! I certainly hope so. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind being known for having created electricity and/or being the ‘first’.

Even though it may not be new news for me, I enjoy reading of how others have ‘figured it out’. Mainly because it was often different (new) from the way I learned and for those times when I have reached the same conclusion as another, there is still much to be learned — Others’ realizations still encourage my own imaginations.

Are you leading or following?
Is your life path a conscious choice or a collection of pre-existing patterns?

It is both and more.

At different times …
* I am the leader.
* I am a follower.
* At times, I enjoy being neither and instead goin’ along with the flow - observing.
Most often …
I desire to break new ground - how I accomplish that ground breaking matters little. What matters to me, is that I pick up the shovel, dig a hole and jump in - alone or with others. I am bound to make a ‘mark’ doing just that.

Either way, no two holes that I dig will be alike. There will always be ’slight variations under the sun.’
Sometimes I will have the most perfect hole and at other times someone else will - you can be sure I’ll be looking at the better hole to add to what I know and make mine even better, if not the best for the next time around. Not with a, ‘better than thou’ attitude, but a, ‘WOW that was great! I’ve learned much from you and will apply this same technique to my own creation and with determination and drive, I will create something wonderful!’ Healthy competition encourages even more Beauty.
(and no, I am certainly NOT talking about stealing someone’s idea, twisting it around a smidgeon and then calling it my own).

As a side note:
I do believe it is much more fun to dig with others rather than alone. This does not mean I am following the crowd. For me, it means I enjoy listening too the chatter of others and sharing my own; discovering those tidbits of information that aid in helping me make wise, conscious choices on this adventurous journey I am on.

So, what am I?

In part, I am a leader who follows and joins in, while breaking new ground along the way. I am adding more to what I know and at times, creating something completely unique — encouraging others to do the same.
More than following or leading -
I am someone who fears ’settling’. It is what keeps me from stayin’ in the same hole for too long. Now, sometimes those holes I dig are darned hard to crawl out of; yet eventually I crawl out because of what I learn personally or from what I learn from others - the followers and the leaders.

In the long run (playing follow the follower) -
It matters what I do most of the time that counts.
Am I making strides and creating more Beauty or am I doin’ the same old same old?

Now, I have said nothing that someone else has not said before me…
I’m ok with that.
For rehashed ideas eventually stick and onward I go.
And perhaps my rehashed idea will be a LIGHT coming on for someone else and even further, perhaps their LIGHT will become a new and even brighter light for others. And wouldn’t that be lovely? Knowing that, in part, I inspired greatness?! My hopes are that I do that for my children and myself.

~Shannon
Ps.
I enjoyed Erin’s comment. It is important for us to decide what sheep we want to graze with.

…that is, unless you can make a significantly better wheel. B-)

I think you nailed it when you wrote “Does it bring you comfort to know that there are thousands on a similar path? Do you derive a sense of security from numbers?”

Takes courage to do something different. Sometimes a lot of courage.

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.” John 10.14

Having said that, I could not agree more about living consciously and being deliberate everything we do. In my opinion, most “Christians” confuse cultural patterns and that which is essential to the faith.

Thanks for this blog which helps me think about my choices even more!

“The mass-man would never have accepted authority external to himself had not his surroundings violently forced him to do so. As to-day, his surroundings do not so force him, the everlasting mass-man, true to his character, ceases to appeal to other authority and feels himself lord of his own existence. On the contrary the select man, the excellent man is urged, by interior necessity, to appeal from himself to some standard beyond himself, superior to himself, whose service he freely accepts. Let us recall that at the start we distinguished the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter the one who makes no demands on himself, but contents himself with what he is, and is delighted with himself. Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, and not the common man who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendental. Hence he does not look upon the necessity of serving as an oppression. When, by chance, such necessity is lacking, he grows restless and invents some new standard, more difficult, more exigent, with which to coerce himself. This is life lived as a discipline- the noble life. Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us- by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. “To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law” (Goethe).”