Follow Your Own Music

Keeping up with the Jones and the constant comparative and relative measuring of yourself is a human condition you can not avoid.  It is the safety and security of the "herd effect" similar to the reactive amydalae brain function that drives us to mimic the people we interact with, within our social demographic strata.  We listen, see and hear what they do - and we "follow the music".

As a teenager I had a black and white poster  in my room (I think Mom got it for me) that had a quote from Henry David Thoreau - "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Add to that the lyrics of my favorite teenager 1968 song by Otis Redding - Dock of the Bay  and you begin to understand the music I followed. :)

"I can't do what ten people tell me to do .....
                              so I guess I'll remain the same"