The other day I was speaking with a friend who said, “I want to travel, but I can’t do it now since I’m just a student.”
She had the sense, as many do, that the time to do what she wants will come “eventually.”
But what if it doesn’t.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don’t wait to speak your own convictions
The other day, a friend of mine shared something gripping on which he has been reflecting lately. He said, “You don’t want to hear your deepest convictions from someone else for the first time; say it yourself.”
I was really taken by this idea — that it’s a shame to hear your own deepest convictions and insights spoken aloud by someone else before you have had the courage and boldness to speak them yourself.
My friend told me that he found this idea in an 1841 essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The next day, I read the essay and here’s the crucial section to which he alluded:
DYING TO MEET YOU 