Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast.

Today's reading was edited and adapted from Working with God by Gardner Hunting, published in 1934.

The poorest reason in the world for doing anything is that somebody else is doing it.

Children have a name for the imitators. They call them a copycat.

But isn't it a curious thing, the copycat habit is almost universal among human beings?

Most of us say the same things about newspapers, relatives, and sunsets that our

friends do. We rise, sit, sleep, and eat as others do. And whether consciously or unconsciously,

one of the aims of our lives is not to be weird, that is, unlike others.

Isn't it pitiful how we so often conform?

Conform to style, to custom, to mode, to trend?

And if we think about it, we come upon a curious anomaly.

The world is actually crying out for originality, for something new under the sun,

yet it slaps at it instantly when it raises its head.

No person is so unpopular as the one who begins to be

unlike the rest. However, no person receives such rewards as the one who persists in it. Strange,

all people seem to be in a conspiracy to curb originality, yet we also all

laud and rewarded.

And then when the applause begins, we all begin trying to ape the originator.

It has been said that genius is smashing the rules.

That may be an inadequate definition.

Most definitions are inadequate.

But it is a fact that no genius ever observes the rules.

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