Imitation Is Suicide

In Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance, he states that imitation is suicide. This could be translated and put into a whole bunch of different perspectives. The main topic he was getting at is if you follow in others footsteps and do as they did, that you're really only killing yourself. Imitation is destroying our personalities and wasting our time that we are given here on earth. Each individual has a different purpose in life and Emerson is saying that if you imitate another person you're ruining your own purpose in life.
            Each person has different likes and dis-likes. We have different hobbies and different beliefs. One individual might grow up and become a doctor while another might grow up and be poet, or a professional football player. A doctor will take a different path in their education than a poet would, and as one might argue that a doctor is more important, that poet serves an important purpose too. Without a doctor lives would be lost and our medication field wouldn't be as great as it is now. Without a poet we lose entertainment, and a major way of how we express ourselves. With either one of these professions missing we lose a major part of life. If everyone followed in the same steps and imitated the same person or way of life we would suffer and lose in another part of life.
            When we were little, we all are guilty of imitation. It first started off as copying everything that your older sibling did. Then it progressed into grade school, coping other kids because of clothes were cool and how cool kids were supposed to act. Some kids in high school still fall to imitation. It's the oldest style out there. The kid that everyone picks on because he's in the debate club and likes to read books instead of drink and party on the weekends is the most probable to succeed in life. That kid is following his own path and straying from imitation. In doing that, he's keeping his own personality and his beliefs instead of throwing them all...