Self-Reliance (Listening to: American Names, Sebastian Grainger)

In my American Studies class we were assigned to read Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Self-Reliance. Here's the full text. There's also a link at the top for a modern English version, because Emerson can get pretty wordy. Trust me though, the long version is worth reading.

I basically fell in love with Emerson reading this essay, and reading another related speech he delivered (American Scholar) only made me love his work more.

One of my favorite ideas is that there is this immense intelligence, this brilliant light, not God or some religious figure, but a universal sense of humanity which you can tap into. I love the idea that this huge, infinite reality is so enormous that it can't exist without being somewhat paradoxical. Anything truly immense has room for mutually conflicting realities. True brilliance is listening to this light that shines into you from all around, these beams of truth. But what brilliance has come to mean is the ability to copy and explain the philosophy of great thinkers before you, following people like Emerson and Thoreau like sheep. (Which reminds me of an amazing movie, Dead Poets Society).
In American Scholar, Emerson outlines how to be a free thinker, if once can even outline such a thing. He says that to be brilliant, you have to tap into this immense intelligence, and that you need to observe nature (because, Emerson says, nature reflects the human soul), you must read books (only using them for inspiration, not as a stifler of your own creativity), and finally and most importantly, you must live. Emerson is one of the only philosophers who cites experience as an enormous factor of intelligence.
One of my other favorite ideas shares some common ground with the Jewish idea of Tikkun Olam, where humanity has been split and you need to gather all the pieces to put it back together. Emerson says that all of humanity constitutes one Man, and that each of us needs tap into the immense intelligence to become instead of a man who thinks, Man Thinking. It's the same concept of gathering the pieces, only according to Emerson, we ARE the pieces.

Did I mention how much I love Emerson?

Anyway the concept of Self-Reliance, independence of other people's ideas and opinions came up in my own life. I won't get too specific, but my best friend since 6th grade and I started having problems last year. I was so scared we were growing apart. I was more terrified by the fact I wasn't sure I loved her anymore than by the thought of her stopping loving me. We worked our problems out for the most part, but then she and my two other friends started doing drugs a lot, and it's just hard to hang out with her now. It's the same thing, but I'm not scared. I don't feel dependent on her. Or any of them. It's not that I don't care what's happening, I just realize I guess that there is a deeper underlying pattern. Another concept we discussed in American Studies. And the pattern here is that people always leave, and I will be fine on my own. I haven't cried since the beginning of Summer. On that note, here is some writing I've done:

Sometimes it feels like the passing of a dream, that dull lack of some inherent sting. I barely feel alive. The pieces of my life have faded like yellowing photographs, and color is more a memory than anything else. Is this purgatory? Is this some hazy death? I used to cry so much I felt electric. I used to feel like overflowing, watching that delicious liquid slosh and dribble and spill. I am all dried out it seems. I thought my tears were brimstone; I thought I was in hell. I thought a lot of things and I believed them. Am I happier now? I can’t remember.

I think I float through your lives as a thing intangible. I have become a lonely recollection, the type that makes you shiver in warm sunlight. I can see your world shifting to cover the holes I once filled. I’m older, wiser. I am the ghost smiling at her old friends and former loves.

This thinning encircles me. I am contained, easily, quietly. Detachment hangs like an anchor from my shoulders. Strangely, it is freeing. I feel infinite. The pettiness I used to cry over, the hate I used to feel, and my fervent desires have all been replaced by a calm certainty.

I am self-reliant. I don’t cling to you. I know, with a tranquil but irrevocable conviction, things which once made me ache to glance at, and they sing to me a lullaby. I am lulled by the song of the universe, by this serene knowledge of my own soul. My vantage is high, and pure of your distortions. I can see so clearly. This tangled web of manic pirouettes and bowing dancers has a pattern, and free of jealousy and fear of loneliness I understand it.

This thinness, this detachment, is but the stilling of my own frantic dance. The clearing of my lovely mind.