The Significance Sandbox

It’s confession time. And I must confess … “I am a heretic.” I don’t mean I’m a heretic only in a religious sense but about life itself. And get this … I’m striving to become more of a heretic all the time. A heretic is one who chooses. Heresy comes from the Greek haireomai , "to choose". And that choice is generally one counter to the established or widely-held belief. In religion and in science, examples abound. The Catholic Church labeled Copernicus and Galileo and John Calvin as heretics for choosing beliefs different from church teachings of the time. Einstein’s work was heretical to the scientific community at first. And those who have argued for social change – including Jesus, Susan B. Anthony, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. found both struggle and success as heretics. My heresy is not on a scale with these famous figures. Yet, I believe there is huge power in an individual’s ability to choose. And often, that choice will be an intentional break from the norms of soci...

-- by Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Return to Heresy as a Virtue