“Dance to the beat of your own drummer:” A piece of advice that I have been told my whole life, and have tried my hardest to follow. The words were taken from Thoreau’s quote, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau changed our lives. How? Well, the answer is not so simple as the statement. …showed first 75 words of 800 total…

…showed last 75 words of 800 total…out in his head and write them down on paper, as opposed to Thoreau, who acted his feelings out. So how did Emerson and Thoreau change our lives? Without their pioneering essays on such subjects as “Self-Reliance” and “Civil Disobedience”, we might never be able to express ourselves without worries of fitting into the constraints and the conformity of our society. We might never be able to “Dance to the beat of our own drummer”.