To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. – e.e. cummings
This has always been the battle. It always, so jaggedly, returns to your soul. The world doesn’t pull back any punches.
God doesn’t either.
If you realize that a battle actually exists for “you” – starting with your spirit – you are already on the side of victory.
Because then you know you have a choice.
The hardest battle any human being can fight is really just to be themselves. And we really don’t even know what that is because all we’ve been taught to do is respond, behave, conduct ourselves into performance – but never initiate.
I always wanted to be a poet.
Nothing else.
I wanted to be other things before I knew I could want to be a poet.
Being yourself, I think, starts with “despite.”
Being yourself is pushback. Being yourself is resistance.
It isn’t a kind of pushback or a kind of resistance. Being yourself is what resistance is.
resistance | rəˈzistəns | verb 1 being yourself
The world’s only goal is to battle you, thought by thought. It’s goal is to convince you to conduct yourself.
It’s plan is to persuade you to perform out, and perform in, a person far, far beneath what you were inspired to be.
It’s aim is to make you everybody else, as the poet says.
Make you.
The world overcomes you when you begin to believe the person you are made to be is the person you want to be.
The fight for you is what it’s always been. It could be the only fight there really ever was.
The fight for you is not about you being irresponsible or destructive or unaccountable.
Fighting for you is the decision, everyday, to be honest to, and despite, the world.