Ralph Waldo Emerson

These are my thought concerning Self-Reliance. I like what Ralph Waldo Emerson said about reading what writers have to say. “The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain.” In other words, what I feel is what really matters.

After reading Emerson’s essay, I believe that the work of the writer is to be thought provoking, so that new thought can rise in the mind of the reader. I am thinking this way because Emerson’s writing instills new thought. He intends to be thought provoking because if we can think for ourselves, we cannot be free.

Frederick Douglass became a free man because he was able to think for himself. He did not conform to what his masters wanted him to know. He learned to read and to think. He used the power that resided within him. “Imitation is suicidal,” said Emerson. This is relevant to Douglas because if had been resigned to being a slave, he would never had learn to read.

Emerson said that relying in our memory is not enough. He wanted us to trust our emotions. I think that by emotions he meant new thoughts. We all have an experience this. So many times we have new thought provoked by something we heard or read. These thoughts are important, but most importantly is that we write them down or say them because when we do not, we let others magnetize us, and when we others magnetize us, we become slaves.

I was thinking of Martin Luther King Jr. He read and was educated, but he went beyond his education and beyond memory. He trusted his emotions and started the Civil Rights Movement. I think that Dr. King is essentially a living example of Emerson’s ideas. And like Jesus and Socrates, Dr. King was misunderstood, but like Jesus and Socrates, he is remembered and brought about social changes.

Emerson said that, “Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He dares not to say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage.” Emerson wanted people to have their own thoughts without fear. This reminded me of Michelangelo, the great Renaissance artist because he was neither timid nor apologetic. He did not imitate someone else. He trusted his emotions and created new works of art.

I have only included males in my examples. Unfortunately, Emerson only included males in his. But I cannot leave Judith Sargent Murray out because she was not an imitator; she was herself and spoke her own thoughts, as we know from On the Equality of the Sexes. She trusted her emotions and was not timid or apologetic.

We can think like our masters, but eventually, we will be exhausted of thinking like them, and we will begin to think for ourselves because the power that resides in us is new, and we do not know what we can do until we try. Finally, I end with this quote from Emerson because I think that is has a lot to say about human nature. “He (meaning man) must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”