ESSAY: Emerson, "Self-Reliance" (1841)

Three works have influenced me as a sort of personal, secular bible; together they form my wisdom-book, the North for my moral compass. They are Emerson's "Self-Reliance," Montaigne's "To philosophize is to learn to die," and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Recently, feeling a spiritual void, I sought to reread them. Commentary on the first follows.

"The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray."

It is easy to complain about this and that aspect of one's present life, perhaps because so many people about one are doing the same. It requires great faith to instead bloom where one is planted, and to understand that all of one's circumstances are fertile soil for a unique flowering. I must make myself see each day as an opportunity.

"Society...loves not realities and creators, but names and customs."

When you feel oppressed by the conformity and dullness of many around you, it helps to remember that this is the way it necessarily is.

"There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold...."

But this is what makes up for the above: the existence of kindred spirits.

"Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us...of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else...."

'Tis ordinary to be compared; the ideal is to be the standard of comparison. Or as a friend wrote me in 2003: "While I may someday meet people 'like Mina,' I shall never meet someone whom 'Mina was like.'"

"My wilful actions...are but roving; --the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect."

Emerson echoes the deep reverence I harbor toward the dreams I have at night, for their innovativeness and their imaginative depth. There is also a distant implication that art comes from inspiration, not just from work.

"But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, --although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun."

This reminds me of the classic philosophical question, "Was mathematics invented or discovered?" It also reminds me of a statement in a college English class that a playwright creates a reality for us out of his characters' perceptions.

"Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night...."

At odds though this may be with the accepted scientific worldview, it's still one of mankind's most poignant fictions. As Thomas Hardy wrote in "At Castle Boterel": "Primaeval rocks form the road's steep border, / And much have they faced there, first and last, / Of the transitory in Earth's long order; / But what they record in colour and cast / Is--that we two passed."

"These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones.... There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence."

What prevents you from being as proud, as self-justifying as Emerson's rose (or as his Rhodora)?

"Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will."

This has been the newest line in my inward rhetoric: that any unhappiness is just a failing of inner strength, that unhappiness is a choice just as happiness is a choice.

"It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. ...[T]he wise man stays at home.... He who travels to be amused...travels away from himself...."

When I am around moneyed jetsetters who only thirst for their next overseas adventure, I always remember Emerson's views on their lifestyle. You are neither cultured nor wise in proportion to the number of stamps on your passport.

"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."

Such was Emerson's parting thought in this essay, and a good point of departure for discussing the abovementioned essay by Montaigne. Peace might be the ultimate goal of all our efforts. More to come.