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Start your journey with E. E. Cummings who said, “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” Then invite Samuel Johnson to join your trek. He is the one who said, “There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.” You should let Friedrich Nietzsche come along too, for he said, “At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth, and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.”
Julius Charles Hare also has some advice qualifying him to serve as your traveling companion, “Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.” It was your fellow traveler, Samuel Johnson, who said, “Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep.”
With that in mind, find room in your party for John Mason. You need his wisdom, “You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.” “Rabbi Zusya said on the Day of Judgment that, God would ask him, not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya.” (Walter Kaufmann) Just be sure you are not asked why you hadn’t been you. …