Modern Transcendentalism

"Every man is a cause, a country, and an age."

"Imitation is suicide."

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."

"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to this iron string."

I HEART RALPH

My original encounter with Emerson was a poor one. I read his essay “Nature” in my junior year of high school, and thought he was a Victorian hippie. Which is sort of true. But I never really got Emerson. Until now.

Now I’m like, where has this been for the last three years?

When I walk, I think. I do that whole philosopher thing where I space out and look at the sky and the veins in the leaves and breathe in the air. It’s like a mini-meditation for me. And one of my secrets is, I am hard-core into meditation.

Meditation for me is a form of prayer and a form of self reliance. During meditation one is entirely self focused, but in this self focus is a mental strengthening and concentration. Meditation has been known to extend life, improve focus, improve test scores, and boost enegry levels. A successful fifteen minute meditation has been known to have the same effects as three hours of sleep. It's all in the mind-body awareness.

.

Emerson writes in a way that makes me want to jump up and down or pump iron or something. The language is invigorating, it's impowering, and it's just plain sexy.

.

Everybody has doubts. I am certainly one of those people. I think I'm not motivated enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not strong enough, not tough enough... And then I read Emerson, and I think "In every work of genius we recognize our own thoughts: they come back to us with a sort of alienated majesty."

.

I have high aspirations. And a high opinion of myself. But that high opinion is puncuated by days of devastating self doubt. "Who am I kidding," I think to myself. "I don't understand how people work. How can I call myself a writer, an artist, a teacher without that?" And then I read on and my own thoughts come back to me with a sort of alienated majesty, and I know. I just know. That I'm going to make it after all.

.

The day we talked about Emerson I went about the rest of my duties in a state of semi-high. I was walking on clouds. I was bouncing off walls. I finished a story I was in the middle of writing with a mad verve. It turned out beautiful. And as for that advice from "The Peaceful Warrior", I've been telling that to all my stressed out friends. And guess what?

.

It works.

.

There's this guy, who shall go unnamed, that likes my work, but has a problem with my stong female characters. He seems to feel that there is some sort of problem with a female character who can kick some ass. There was some agreement with him. But I rebel against this. I refuse to deny that spark that is within myself that screams, "I can be a human being too. I can win. I can be stronger, wiser, than you." And don't you ever deny me that.

.

I can feel it in my blood, the knowledge that we are equal, and in true Emersonian fashion, I REFUSE to submit to that which is not true to myself.

.

I had some girls come up to me later and thank me for standing up for myself and women in general. Too damn bad they didn't stand up for me before. I had to go it alone. I had to nonconform.

.

This, by the way, is not easy. Actually, it sucks. You feel like you must be wrong. It's hard to ignore the feeling. On my part, I wondered if I was just a bad writer.

.

Well, I may not be Bronte, but I'm not the worst writer ever.

.

And I took a stand.

.

"Yet the discontent of the multitude [is] more formidable than that of the senate or the college."

.

This idea, this "Self Reliance" gets me so fired up that I find it almost impossible to look at academically. I just feel it too much. It's like a pounding, a mental rhythm in my brain from two hundred years ago. It demands change. It demands action, and it speaks to me. "The soul created the arts wherever they may flourish."

.

Ah! Be still my beating heart!

.

Okay, but seriously. As much as I love me my Emerson, I must admit that there are some things upon which we disagree at a most intimate level.

.

"Are they my poor?" Yes, Mr. Emerson, they are. And you'd best take care of them, because let's see how self-reliant you are if you couldn't afford to eat.

.

Poverty is a big issue to me in part for this reason. How can we be great if we are starving? How can we create if all our minds can do is circle around the sick child we have to care for and the money we don't have to do it? Answer- we can't.

.

In "Becoming Jane," a really boring, depressing movie about the life of Jane Austen, Jane's father says to her, "Nothing kills genius like poverty."

.

I hated that movie, but something about that line resounds. It stays with me even now. And Emerson contradicts himself in it.

.

The self-reliant man cannot exist without the help and aid of his society. I don't think Emerson would disagree with me on that point. But the poor man is the victim of this self-reliance, and in order to restore to him his dignity AND his self-reliance, we as self-reliant individuals must lift him out of circumstance. A self reliant America is not outside the greasy tentacles of corporate greed. Let us not forget Enron.

.

In my mind, self-reliance is good for everyone, so long as we don't forget to respect the other people, and the reliance that they place on themselves.

.

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind."