Misunderstanding All You See

I am dedicating this post to my high school English teacher, Ms. Anderson. Ms. A, even though you made me sit in the front center desk in your classroom, even though you warned the class "this is what happens when you do drugs" after you read my creative writing journal out loud to the class (hey, I was experimenting with spontaneous prose...), and even though you often dismissed my insights into literature with laughter, I want to thank you. Yes, contrary to what you probably believe, I did actually take away a lot from both of the American Lit classes you taught. I thank you for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I thank you for The Learning Tree. Most of all, I thank you for Self Reliance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self Reliance is no joke probably one of my favorite essays of all time, right up there with Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and Sarte's Existentialism is a Humanism. In great irony, I am going to do the exact opposite of what Emerson advises in his writings by exulting the genius of others, namely Emerson himself. Emerson implores us to strike our own genius and to become our own selves independent of the thoughts of others. We must embrace our true selves and follow this path regardless of the paths that others have set out for us. We should not base our lives on past events when we know that continuing to follow these past actions will keep us from being true to our inherent selves. This, according to Emerson, is a "foolish consistency" and the "hobgoblin of little minds." Instead of walking down the same beaten paths, we should strike a new path, seek new ideas, and break out past the paradigms of accepted thought. We fear treading this unknown, but we must trust in ourselves that we alone know the way to our enlightenment. We must cast off the ridicule that we will face, because we shall surely be misunderstood. Emerson states that "misunderstood" is a "right fool's word." We must rely on our own self-opinion, not others'. "If we live truly, we shall see truly." To rely on anything else is cowardly.

Emerson's words and wisdom ring just as true today as when they were first written in 1841. How can we as individuals move forward when we refuse to look anywhere but behind us towards the past? We have become such a social creature that we have all but surrendered individual thought. Who cares what the crowd thinks or demands? Those who have been truly great, those individuals who have contributed the most radical of ideas have done so without regard to public opinion and have many times been persecuted for it. We hold ourselves back because we fear. We fear our own ideas because we fear isolation from society. However, we should not fear isolation but embrace it. For it is the individual nature that allows the great thinker to overcome conformity and consistency.

But here I am doing exactly what I predicted; I am simply regurgitating Emerson's words (and doing a poor job at that). Instead, I am going to link Self Reliance here. I strongly encourage you to read it. At the very least, skim it for the highlights. You will thank me for it.

In the meantime I am going to share some of my favorite quotes:

To believe your own thought, to believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loathe to disappoint them.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.


If we live truly, we shall see truly.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

And finally, my favorite quote from Self Reliance, one that I still have on a laminated bookmark that Ms. Anderson gave me on the final day of class:

Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Maybe Ms. Anderson understood after all. Thanks, Ms. A.