This entry from The Daily Stoic resonates a lot with me. I used to rely heavily on other people for my ideas. If I liked what someone said, I tended to take what they said as gospel without thinking it through or looking at it from other angles, or thinking much for myself. I still love listening to what certain people have to say but I now take everything with a grain of salt, especially if I’m listening to someone I really like. My thoughts and perspectives aren’t always as consistent as they once were, and that’s fine with me. I like that I’m thinking more for myself now, so having some inconsistencies doesn’t bother me. I’d rather have those inconsistencies than depend completely on somebody else to think for me. Whether or not I can work out all the inconsistencies and contradictions in my thinking, I plan to continue thinking for myself, finding value wherever I can, and sharing my ideas with anyone who will listen.
“For it’s disgraceful for an old person, or one in sight of old age, to have only the knowledge carried in their notebooks. Zeno said this… what do you say? Cleanthes said that… what do you say? How long will you be compelled by the claims of another? Take charge and stake your own claim – something posterity will carry in its notebook.”
-Seneca, Moral Letters, 33.7
Musing in his notebook about the topic of immortality, Ralph Waldo Emerson complained how writers dance around a difficult topic by relying on quotes. “I hate quotation,” he wrote. “Tell me what you know.”
Seneca was throwing down the same gauntlet some twenty centuries before. It’s easier to quote, to rely on the wise words of others. Especially when the people you’re deferring to are such towering figures!
It’s harder (and more intimidating) to venture out on your own and express your own thoughts. But how do you think those wise and true quotes from those towering figures were created in the first place?
Your own experience has value. You have accumulated your own wisdom too. Stake your claim. Put something down for the ages – in words and also in example.