“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote.

‘Okay, so this thing that you’re trying to do that no human being has done before is hard. And you’re shocked? If it wasn’t tough, there would be queues or hoards of people out here!’ which first gives Ben a sense of perspective again, a way to be more gentle with himself.”

Seeing the uncommon foundations of a rise is not merely a contrarian way of looking at the world. It has, in many cases, been the only way that we have created the one in which we are honored to live.

King had confronted difficulties with speaking earlier in his life. He earned the passing grade of C in his oratory class in Seminary not once but twice, and yet went on to lead a nation through the power of spoken truth.

“Pictures have a power akin to song,” Douglass said. “Give me the making of a nations [sic] ballads, and I care not who has the making of its Laws.”36

“Half of my job is being able to let students come in and close the door,” Dawson said about the safe space that he offers to these often public young performers, for whom the inner landscape of striving can make coming close feel like the most common place of all.

There are reviews and there are reviews. All artists are bound to feel the sting of a blistering critical attack from some quarter.

The near win changes our focus to consider how we plan to attain what lies in our sights, but out of reach.

Having disempowered what threatens to do us the most harm, we are shored up with the knowledge that nothing else truly can.