The youth’s only salvation lies, then, in dodging these pressures. It
is not his business to make his own way in life so much as it is to
prevent some one else from making it for him. His business is to keep
the way clear, and the sky open above his head. Then he will grow and
be nurtured according to his needs and his inner nature. He must fight
constantly to keep from his head those coverings that institutions
and persons in the guise of making him warm and safe throw over his
body. If young people would spend half the time in warding away the
unfavorable influences that they now spend in conscientiously planning
what they are going to be, they would achieve success and maintain
their individuality. It seems, curiously enough, that one can live
one’s true life and guarantee one’s individuality best in this indirect
way,--not by projecting one’s self out upon the world aggressively,
but by keeping the track clear along which one’s true life may run.
A sane, well-rounded, original life is attained not so much by taking
thought for it as by the dodging of pressures that would limit and warp
its natural growth. The youth must travel the straight road serenely,
confident that “his own will come to him.” All he must strive for is
to recognize his own when it does come, and to absorb and assimilate
it. His imagination must be large enough to envisage himself and his
own needs. This wisdom, however, comes to too many of us only after
we are hopelessly compromised, after we are encrusted over so deeply
that, even if we try to break away, our struggles are at the expense
of our growth. The first duty of self-conscious youth is to dodge the
pressures, his second to survey the world eagerly to see what is “his
own.” If he goes boldly ahead at first to seek his own, without first
making provision for silencing the voices that whisper continually at
his side, “Conform!”--he will soon find himself on alien ground, and,
if not a prisoner, a naturalized citizen before he has time to think.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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