A man start become a sheep if he does not trust his own leadership any longer. Every man is born as the leader of his own life. Yet, to remain in charge your life in this chaotic world, the man has to be a non-conformist, as Ralph Waldo Emerson famously put it back in 1841 in his essay Self-Reliance.
Photo by Jehyun Sung
A non-conformist is someone who trusts his own instincts, his own skills and his own truth; as it is assembled from experiences in his reality. He does not conform to rules put there by any club or government by default, as he knows these rules change constantly. Instead, a non-conformist discovers his own principles based on the truth he learns from his personal experiences. His actions will reflect these principles in the reality around him.
A non-conformist can not be a sheep. He will not allow himself to follow the crowd running in the wrong direction. He rather finds his own way. He will learn from experience and learn new truths about life.
As a result, people around him will notice he is the one who has the confidence to make his own choices in life. This is where it might get tough for a man like this. If you do things differently, people will most likely react negative, as they feel threatened. Sheep hide their own insecurity by aggression against anything that difference from their own situation.
The man should protect himself from it by not giving any attention to it and keep going anyway. This is not easy, as anyone around you can be the thing pushing him over the edge. The ones that have the potential to hurt a non-conformist are the ones closest to him: his family and friends. Family may work against him, but he can forgive them. Friends on the other hand can be lethal, as they know the man’s history, character and weak-points. They will use them and try to destroy the man, in order to sleep well at night themselves.
The problem sheep have is that they have allowed the world and people around them to get under our skin. Many fail by the crushing weight of life’s struggle. They give up their own dreams and instead, agree to work on someone else’s dream.
That dream is the dream of the non-conformist who kept going despite everything that is thrown at him. He is not scared, he is ready to take on the challenge. He is bold enough to lead his life. He is the only wolf of the pack. That is why he will be the leader of the group. The sheep will follow.
(He is just as likely to be a She)
