The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that we often overlook the value of current opportunities while chasing distant dreams that may be misleading.
John Burroughs conveys the idea that many people are drawn to the allure of distant goals or challenges, believing they offer greater rewards. However, he warns that such pursuits can be deceiving, and that true opportunities often lie in our immediate surroundings. Embracing and recognizing the potential in the present can lead to more meaningful achievements.
In practice
During a motivational speech about career development, one might reference this quote to encourage focusing on local opportunities.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
Next to the laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because he is freer and his mind more at leisure.
Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
Strongest minds are often those whom the noisy world hears least.
The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.
Before you agree to do anything that might add even the smallest amount of stress to your life, ask yourself: What is my truest intention? Give yourself time to let a yes resound within you. When it's right, I guarantee that your entire body will feel it.
Individuals should think about the worst-case scenarios and plan for them. The world will be crazier than you think it will be. Put money away, and then you can live with much more freedom.
Sometimes it's easy to go where the wind blows, but those that stand firmly planted are forces to be reckoned with.
True abundance has nothing to do with what I am having, but everything to do with what I am being.
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