Considering Individuality

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Healthy, free, the world before me, leading wherever I choose.

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A learner with the simplest. . .a novice beginning.

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. . . I wanna be somebody

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These are the voices we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.

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Why?

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Slow down here. Is there something I can say to delay 
this troubling attitude from sinking in?

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You are here,

10 
The powerful play goes on and you can contribute a verse


because nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

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Believe your own thought, believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all.


Isn't this more like it?  Raise them confident.  Raise them Bold.

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Nobody living can ever stop you.

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Then again

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For nonconformity, the world whips you with its displeasure.

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Be bold.  Be confident.  Be yourself.  Such basic advice, we hear it in commercials for cars and for in jingles for jeans.

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But these are just ads--unreal ways of being.  In the end, what if it just leads to pain?  Not to mention rebellion.

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But the play is going on.  I want them to contribute a verse.

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I want them to say 

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1. Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road"
2. Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
3. Saul Williams, "List of Demands"
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
7. Brian Jonestown Massacre, "Wasting Away"
9. Walt Whitman "O Me! O Life!"
10. Walt Whitman "O Me! O Life!"
11. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
12. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
14. Woody Guthrie "This Land is Your Land"
16. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
18. Levi's Commercial, "O Pioneers"
21. Jurassic 5, "I Am Somebody"