Wholly Strange And New

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name;—— the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can you remember a moment in your life when you had life in yourself and it was wholly strange and new? Can you remember the moment when you stopped walking a path of someone else, and started cutting your own?

Write about that moment. And if you haven’t experienced it yet, let the miracle play out in your mind’s eye and write about that moment in your future.

Bridget Pilloud poses this prompt in the Trust 30 Challenge and while your MatchGirl enjoys contemplating all of these prompts, I am finding them to be a bit repetitive. In contemplating my responses to these prompts, the ones that I have shared with you online and the ones I have thought about and kept private (of which there are only a couple), I see that the common themes are fear and originality. And while I know these are important things to keep in mind (for your MatchGirl, fear has always been more of a problem than originality. As you, gentle readers, are all aware, your MatchGirl is nothing if not unique.) I want to think about something else.

I follow my own path. I don't think that I have done what has been expected of me. Not that I have disappointed, but, as I wrote previously, your MatchGirl was lucky enough to be raised by parents who not only allowed me to follow my own path, but encouraged me to do so. For me, it's been a windy path, filled with fits and starts and backing up and going forward and veering off in a new and scary direction from time to time. But it's certainly mine. And I push myself to do that every day. And the days that I don't work hard enough or accomplish enough (in my own mind's eye) just make me push harder the next.

I can imagine the next miracles that are going to come to me.

I'm working my ass off to make them happen.

I won't bore you with the details right now. I've written it all before...

Tomorrow Never Comes

Do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take a moment, step back from your concerns, and focus on one thing: You have one life to achieve everything you’ve ever wanted. Sounds simple, but when you really focus on it, let it seep into your consciousness, you realize you only have about 100 years to get every single thing you’ve ever wanted to do. No second chances. This is your only shot. Suddenly, this means you should have started yesterday. No more waiting for permission or resources to start. Today is the day you make the rest of your life happen. Write down one thing you’ve always wanted to do and how you will achieve that goal. Don’t be afraid to be very specific in how you’ll achieve it: once you start achieving, your goals will get bigger and your capability to meet them will grow.

One hundred years, gentle readers, to achieve everything that you hope to achieve. Imagine that. But here's the thing that Colin Wright is wrong about. Most of us don't get 100 years. Not from birth to end of life. Not of active years. Not of a life where we can really make our own decisions.

Sure, some people are lucky enough to have been raised in an environment where they can really be themselves, from an early age, where they can assert their creativity and their entrepreneurship. Where they are allowed to put themselves out their. Where they can fail. Most, your MatchGirl supposes, however, are not.

So... that means we have so much less time than Colin supposes. We have ... maybe 60 years. Seems like a long time when you're young, I guess. I know that time has a funny way of seeming to be very different than it actually is. One hundred years seems like a very very long time. So does sixty. But think for a moment, how quickly a year passes. You blink and suddenly the month is over and you're not sure where it has gone. A year, even when it feels it is so long at times, is not long in reality. It's over before you know it.

Your MatchGirl is a master procrastinator. She started young and she's carried it on well into her adult-hood. It's something that drives me crazy in myself and even crazier when I see it in others. Because, while from time to time I'll leave things till the last moment, I do really love to plan, to make sure that everything will be all set, to make sure that things are taken care of. It's easy to do this when it's your day job. It's easy to do this when it's an event your planning (especially when working with others). It's less simple when it's something that just for you.

My take-away for this prompt then, dear readers, is that I will pay as much attention to planning for a doing the things that are "just" for me as I do to those things associated with my paying gig. The projects that are mine are mine. I need to own them. To dedicate myself to them. To push them forward. And, eventually, to share them with you. I can't do this if I'm constantly putting them off until tomorrow. We all know, after all, that tomorrow never comes....

Find Your Way

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name; the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world buzzes about goals and visions. Focus. Create a vivid picture of exactly where you want to go. Dream big, then don’t let anything or anyone stop you. The problem, as Daniel Gilbert wrote in Stumbling Upon Happiness, is that we’re horrible at forecasting how we’ll really feel 10 or 20 years from now – once we’ve gotten what we dreamed of. Often, we get there only to say, “That’s not what I thought it would be,” and ask, “What now?” Ambition is good. Blind ambition is not. It blocks out not only distraction, but the many opportunities that might take you off course but that may also lead you in a new direction. Consistent daily action is only a virtue when bundled with a willingness to remain open to the unknown. In this exercise, look at your current quest and ask, “What alternative opportunities, interpretations and paths am I not seeing?” They’re always there, but you’ve got to choose to see them. - Jonathan Fields

This, gentle readers, is something your MatchGirl wished she had thought about when she was much younger. Because when I was young, I was stubborn (those who know me now will say I still, am - they are right - but about fewer things, and with a more open mind). And in this stubbornness, sometimes, I'm afraid I missed opportunity. I didn't see them at all.

It has taken some big changes in my life, over the course of the years, to be able to see that the path I am on might have a lot of hidden passages in it. This has been true in the past in work, in school, in relationships.

Now, I feel that I am constantly learning and I am trying to constantly see the opportunities that lie not only in the direction I feel I should be moving, but a little bit off to the side. The most important thing I have learned, dear ones, over the past several years, is that life is rarely what you expect it to be. All you can do is keep your eyes and your heart open to what's around you and you'll find the path you're supposed to be on.

Surprise Yourself

I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think of a time when you didn’t think you were capable of doing something, but then surprised yourself.  How will you surprise yourself this week?

I like this little prompt from Ashley Ambirge. I like it because while she is certainly a gal who faced fear (out of necessity, but maybe that's what we all need sometimes...  your MatchGirl can relate to that!) this prompt is not about fear. This prompt is about surprise.

I do things every day that are so very boring. So very rote. But sometimes, some days, gentle readers, your MatchGirl surprises herself. She steps up. She faces up. She's working on some projects right now and, if I can pull it off, that will certainly surprise me. 

I'll keep you posted.

Holding Back

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. – Ralph Waldo Emerson



Is fear holding you back from living your fullest life and being truly self expressed? Put yourself in the shoes of the you who’s already lived your dream and write out the answers to the following:

Is the insecurity you’re defending worth the dream you’ll never realize? or the love you’ll never venture? or the joy you’ll never feel?

Will the blunder matter in 10 years? Or 10 weeks? Or 10 days? Or 10 minutes?

Can you be happy being anything less than who you really are?

Now Do. The Thing. You Fear.


Fear by Cotter Lachlan

No. The answer is simply no.
Gentle readers, your MatchGirl cannot put herself in the shoes of someone who has lived her dreams. That's just not possible.

Here's the thing, dear ones. My dreams are my own.
Am I inspired by others? Of course. Do I look at people who have reached levels of success that I hope to achieve and wonder how they got there so quickly and if I can get there, too? Of course.
But there is no one person who has achieved my dreams.

I have, though, been held back by fear. Especially when I was younger. I wrote about facing one's fears, posted last Friday, as part of this very challenge.

So here are some things I have been terrified of, and that I have faced head on.

Unemployment.
Asking for what I want out of a relationship.
Approaching people for help - job related or networking related.
Standing out in a crowd.
Talking to strangers.
Getting serious about my life.
Going for what I want.

The main thing that ties all these fears together, gentle readers, is an underlying fear for so many of us. It's a fear of rejection. Here's something, however, that your MatchGirl has learned about rejection over the years - it's not really so bad. Because, at the end of the day, there is always someone - be it friend, lover, parent - out there who loves you and wants you and will steel you up again.

So I agree with Lachlan. Face your fears. Do the thing that you're afraid of.

You'll be better for it in the end.

I promise.

Imitation Is Suicide

Imitation is Suicide. Insist on yourself; never imitate. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write down in which areas of your life you have to overcome these suicidal tendencies of imitation, and how you can transform them into a newborn you – one that doesn’t hide its uniqueness, but thrives on it. There is a “divine idea which each of us represents” – which is yours?

I don't know how to answer Fabian Kruse's question, gentle readers. I truly don't.

Your MatchGirl, in her own opinion, has always been a pretty original bird.

It was, in fact, probably a bad thing when I was young. At least for my social life. Middle and high school girls tend to want to march to the beat of only one drummer, and those that are different than them are not always (or often) welcomed to the fold.

In terms of art, I think it infuriated my professors at university that they could not stick my paintings or my influences into one neat basket. Not that they did not value individuality and originality. They certainly did. But how to critique something you don't know what to compare it to?

I don't know how to approach this prompt, dear ones. Because I don't see myself as an imitator... To thine own self be true, isn't that how the saying goes? Is there any other way that one ought to live? I believe that I was raised to stay true to myself, to be my own person, and that I have lived that way - or tried to - for most of my life....  I don't have a true answer for this, but for now, though I'm posting it, I leave this essay unfinished...

Be Good To Each Other

Today's Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance Challenge prompt, from Eric Handler, is not a simple thing to wrap one's head around, gentle readers. Your MatchGirl has, for the past two years (a little longer) been sharing her life with you on these virtual pages. She has been sharing her hopes and reams and fears, but, she has also been spreading her message.

And perhaps I could have answered this in a tweet. It's quite possible that it needs no more than that.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?

But as I take this Trust 30 challenge, I have, for the most part, enjoyed sharing my thought process, here with you. I hope that you've been enjoying being part of it. And, though I post a handful of days behind, due the the publishing schedule of this blog, I hope that you've enjoyed keep up with what I'm writing about. Believe, your MatchGirl is thinking on and writing about these prompts every day. It's a good exercise. I hope many of you are participating as well.

But, to today's prompt. If I could spread my personal message to one million people, right now, what on Earth would I say?

Be good to each other. Treat each other right. Think about how you want to be treated and, for goodness sake, act accordingly when you're interacting with others. Life is too short, gentle ones, to act any other way. So I share with you, fewer than one million people, but perhaps I will reach one thousand who will take this to heart an spread it to one thousand more (and that's a really nice start). 


Be good to each other. It's the golden rule.


It's how your MatchGirl tries to live her life. I hope it's how you try to live yours.