The Genuine Within

“There is in every person something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in herself. There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself.

Nobody like you has ever been born. And no one like you will ever be born again. You are the only one.

If you cannot hear it, the sound of the genuine in you, you will never find whatever it is for which you’re searching. And if you hear it and then do not follow it, “it were better that he had never been born.”

You are the only you that has ever lived. Your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all the existences. And if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”

– Howard Thurman, 1980 Baccalaureate Address at Spelman College