Nothing can bring you peace but yourself

Post date: Oct 6, 2012 3:55:05 PM

Self-reliance, by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I understand Emerson, fully understand him, I empathize with him. I’m sure other people don’t understand him, even less empathize with him. He’s an individualist, I’m an individualist –we can’t help it. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. We’re ugly for that. And also because every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways us more than is right. So do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor?

No, they aren’t, Ralph, but don’t tell, and don’t tell either that we do not wish to expiate, but to live. And yes, we will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. But you know who the great man is: he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. Because we know that if I know your sect, I anticipate your argument.

You warn us to beware of foolish consistency –consistency in order to please others, I assume: Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? Others will try to use it to their advantage, of course. But you believe in truth, esteem it far much than most people do: Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. And you know that true consistency comes this way: Our genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.

So speaking the truth is the way to live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse, because, as you say, we cannot sell our liberty and our power, to save their sensibility.

Is it harsh to say that sympathy, as we usually understand it and put it in action, is as base as regrets, when we come to them who weep foolishly and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason? But I've experienced that and know that it's true.

You say, Ralph, back in your time, more than a century and a half ago, let us never bow and apologize more. Ha! Hope you’re peacefully resting in your tomb and not in heaven or hell watching us doing in this world of ours nowadays.

Insist on yourself: never imitate. I’ll try to live by these words, and pass them to the one I’m responsible for.

And thank you, Mr Emerson, very much.