Self-Reliance
A reading for the end of the year and the beginning of another year, and the rest of your life
If you want to read something smart and uplifting to wrap up 2023, I highly recommend Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson who in1841 dropped some major wisdom, diving deep into the idea of being self-sufficient.
In Self-Reliance, Emerson basically says, "Trust your gut, kids." He's all about ditching the crowd mentality and not blindly following what society or institutions tell you to do. According to him, society can be too pushy about fitting in, stifling your unique self. So, he's giving us the nudge to live our lives true to ourselves. As for me, I believe this to the core of my being. Having lived a life of teetering on the edge of darkness, and endless rebounds from it, I now know that the only thing that brings true joy is trying / being authentic. Until only recently, I thought that I’ve wasted time, and energy and, frankly, a lot of my life trying to chase something and being chased by something at the same time, unsure what it was that I was chasing and what I was running from but always feeling not quite in my life. And then, one day (it really was a thing that seemed to happen over night), I realized that none of that was wasted. I was learning the whole time. What I chased and what chased me was authenticity and I believe the conflict that I’ve felt stemmed from not realizing I that I have always prayed on the altar of it. So now, I feel like I don’t have to run anymore or chase it because I know what it is.
Anyway, here’s the beginning of the essay, followed by link that will take you to the rest (it’s long but it’s so, so worth it1).
Self-Reliance
“Ne te quaesiveris extra2.”
“"Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."
Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune
Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat"
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.”
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe our own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought, is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
https://emersoncentral.com/ebook/Self-Reliance.pdf
It’s really, really worth it.
"Do not seek outside yourself." In other words, "Look within."