Individuality – Sunday, March 15, 1981
It is said that a famous philosopher wanted only two words written on his tombstone “the individual”. That may seem strange at first until we think what a remarkable achievement it is to be ourselves in a world that is constantly beckoning us to be somebody else.
We learn early that it is desperately important to fit in. We become terribly concerned about what “they” think. We try to wear what “they” say is right, join the clubs of which “they” approve. And most of all we like to state opinions of which “they” will agree. Perhaps there is nothing more lonely to the human heart than to feel like an outsider, insolated in one way or another from what we believe “they” are experiencing. There is nothing more devastating than to find out how really alone we are, inside our own skins.
But it was Edwin Hubble Chapin who suggested, “We live too much in platoons; we march by sections; we do not live in our individuality enough; we are slaves to fashion in mind and heart”.1
We do chain ourselves to the approval of others; we feel safest in committee. We embrace a thousand daily rituals that keep us from that awesome moment of seeing who we are.
You would think it was the masses and not the individual that had made mankind’s greatest progress. But think about it; it was the majority who thought Gallileo’s new ideas about the universe were heretical. It was a group that laughed at Columbus’ venture. And saddest of all, it was a mob that called for the crucifixion of the greatest individual, Jesus of Nazareth.
Well, maybe we avoid testing our individuality because of fear. What if we try our dream and find it turns to ashes in our hand? What if we crash though the layers of conventional habit to find ourselves, and then feel naked and vulnerable. Being ourselves—and no one else—is a high-risk endeavor .
But it’s a risk that is an important part of life. In the eternal scheme of things we are not just twenty or forty or sixty years old. We all have spirits that have existed long before this earth. And the scriptures tell us that the debate even then, in the pre-earth councils, was over our freedom to choose. The struggle continues. But so often, we, ourselves, limit that freedom by stifling our imagination and our deepest yearnings as we search for some kind of false security.
Life at its best should fulfill one great purpose—to reveal us to ourselves. Those who are afraid of that may find they spend a lifetime avoiding that which can bring life’s greatest rewards.
1 “Habits, Humor; Faults and Fashions” Richard Evans. Quote Book. Publishers Press, Salt Lake City, Utah, pg. 217
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March 15, 1981
Broadcast Number 2,691