Favorite Inspirational Quotes

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured and far away.

Henry David Thoreau

This one strikes deep on so many levels. I have been marching to my own music all my life. So much so that most people do not understand the choices I have made. When choosing my career path in college, I was accused of doing so to get near boys because it was a career field women didn’t enter much.

Rarely did I do what people expected even when I did the so-called normal things such as career, marriage, and family. I, with my family, have even spent time in the mountains, much like Thoreau, and been accused of running away and not facing “reality”. Let me tell you, it doesn’t get much more real than living the way we did.

Yet here I am wanting my own children to not live the way they do. One child has picked a path so foreign to me that I can’t even help her when she calls for help - except to throw money her way and that I have resolved to stop doing. After all, she chose her music, not I.

I am also, or I was, facing a new phase in my life within a few years called retirement and I keep railing against the vision for it my spouse presents. Why? Because it is so mundane, so ordinary. Yet there are so many aspects to the vision that are comfortable and relaxing and that I would enjoy. I guess I’ll just have to find my own twist on that like I have on so many other things.

How do you keep pace with a different drummer? Don’t ever feel you must do what everyone else is doing. Listen to what is in your heart and listen to the music of your spirit. Keep pace with that drummer you hear.