“The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.”

From the Four Hour Work Week; Colin Wilson, British author of the Outsider.

I found this quote poignant. It is part of the reason we feel pride as we watch the recent protests in Egypt. Most of us suffer for long periods of times, weather in a job, a marriage, a mortgage, as victims of discrimination or of an injustice.  Like cows in the rain we are often paralyzed not by a lack of will, but by fear of an imagined outcome.

How then must it feel to live a life unafraid? Live a life not burdened by the thought of feeling like an outsider? Living a life unbound by the normal “rules”?

If we were a cow it may mean leaving the heard, in order to find a greener pasture. And although, yes we run the risk of starvation if our quest is not successful, at least in hunger we have the sensation of being alive.