Nonconformity

We all have our own version of utopia (aka. bliss).  For some people, utopia is a spouse, children, and a 9-5 job.  For others, utopia is being single.  Or adopting kids.  Being childless.  Free-lance work.   Living in a high-rise in Manhattan.  Or a mud hut in Africa. 

At latest estimate, there are nearly 7 billion people on earth.  Which means there are 7 billion versions of utopia, right?  Unfortunately, no.  Instead of creating their own utopia, people routinely conform to a cookie-cutter version.

During my trip, I've observed that an obstacle holding people back from achieving dreams and traveling the globe is fear about how others will perceive and judge their utopia.

Whatever your utopia (you alone, are the only one who can figure that out), here is some inspiration to break away from the mold and create a life ruled by love, not fear.  Here are eight of my favorite nonconformity quotes from the world's finest thinkers:

"All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions."

~Adlai Stevenson

 

"Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to."

~Alan Keightley

"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."

~Sir Cecil Beaton

"They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own."

~Antonio Porchia

"A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Not all those who wander are lost."

~J.R.R. Tolkien

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."

~Albert Camus

"How glorious it is - and also how painful - to be an exception."

~Alfred de Musset

* Pictures are from Sarajevo, Bosnia.