How To Discover
Your True Self
Ralph Waldo Emerson on extraordinary men,
nature and self-reliance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson left his home in Boston,
Massachusetts, in 1833 and sailed across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean
island of Malta. His first wife had passed away in 1831 and he was still
fraught with grief. A tour of Europe would, Emerson thought, ease his mind; a
journey that would give him distance from his old wounds. But, Emerson did not
wish to lose his sadness in the beauty of European architecture, history and
culture. Instead, he travelled to Europe to company himself with the renowned
artists and writers of his time, seeking wisdom and knowledge from men who he
could previously only admire from a distance.
He
spent several months in Italy, visiting Rome, Florence and Venice. In Rome, he
met John Stuart Mill, who gave him a letter of recommendation to meet Thomas
Carlyle, a Scottish essayist who Emerson respected.
Next,
he moved to France and Switzerland, visiting the Jardin des Plantes and
Voltaire’s old home in Ferney. He reflected that had Goethe been alive, he
might have visited Germany. But, he quickly went onto England, travelling
across the Channel from France, where he spent time with William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle. All three were extraordinary
writers and poets whom Emerson had much admired.
He
recorded his meetings with these three men in his travel memoir ‘English
Traits’. His description of these great characters whom he met on his travels,
and who were so generous in giving their day to the unknown and unpublished
American is a tilted balance of slight praise and unreserved disappointment.
His disappointment in his meetings with these men is most obvious in his
journal entries whilst he awaited his return ship at Liverpool.
Indeed,
he viewed Wordsworth as a rather tired, stern, insular man whose opinions were
of no value — he spoke a lot of nothing
but did so with a great sense of moral conviction. Emerson was repulsed by his
conformity to the wisdom of the time. He had assumed Wordsworth, given the
beauty of his poetry, to be an eccentric character, someone
who had a unique perspective to share.
His
visit to see Coleridge was tiresome and of no use except that Emerson could now
put a face to the colourful words he had read back at home. It was a brief
spectacle, without the substance of an enjoyable conversation and he left with
little memory of what Coleridge had told him.
Carlyle
impressed Emerson. He shared lively anecdotes in conversations, his northern
accent carried words with strength and he did not hold the pretentious instinct
to hide from the common man as the others did. Still, Emerson left his presence
with a quiet displeasure.
These
men were great writers, poets and artists, the very beacon of European
romanticism, and Emerson had expected to be raptured in their presence,
clinging to their every word with an immature delight like a child to its
father. But, instead, Emerson left Liverpool without a meaningful word to say
about his meetings with the English literary class.
In
England, it was clear to Emerson just how ordinary the extraordinary were.
These were men of great minds, men who defined what was possible, men who
streamed lights and sounds into poetry, men who saw beauty in the darkest of
corners. Yet, Emerson thought the characters of these extraordinary men to be
rather dull, reclusive and plain, the reverse of what one would have assumed.
It is
always assumed that there must be something unconventional or strange about
great people. For Emerson, who had travelled far into the wet and misty
countryside of England to meet such men, this ordinariness was an uncomfortable
surprise. Emerson began to question his assumptions about the lives of great
men.
Emerson
asked himself, if the personalities of these extraordinary men — William Wordsworth, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle — were,
upon meeting, so ordinary, what, then, is preventing the ordinary person from
becoming extraordinary?
“I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see
all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or
particle of God. . . .”
Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Nature
‘Nature’ displays an attempt to solve the question of why
the majority do not recognise the beauty and power of the natural world.
The
common man, Emerson wrote, imprisons himself with the demands of civilised
society; he wakes at dawn and sleepwalks through the day, his head bowing
towards his feet, never noticing the colours of the leaves or the patterns in
the sky.
Yet,
nature is charitable, it continues to produce, blossoming and hibernating
according to the cycle of the seasons. Still, man never gives nor appreciates,
only receives. He is apathetic, even unconscious to nature. His chest bares
only emptiness and he loses himself in phoney attachments and greed. He does
not realise that the soil in the ground, the fallen rain from the sky and the
blowing of the wind are the same as the blood in his veins.
The
sun evaporates the oceans, the wind carries the seeds, the rain feeds the
flowers — “the endless circulations
of the divine charity nourish man” — but, man
stays unaware, keeping the foolish belief that he is separate, a conqueror that
must bruise everything that sways in his path.
Emerson
was a true lover of nature; he found magnificence in every droplet of rain,
every muddy field, every leafless tree. For nature is always beautiful, even at
its most ghastly, even with its sharp teeth and venom.
He
believed nature to be divine, referring to it as the “Universal Being”. When he
spoke of nature, he was, at the same time, speaking of God. The two are
inseparable, for man and the wind are one, both holding the spirit of nature,
the “Supreme Being”. The spirit, the Supreme Being did not, Emerson wrote,
build nature around us but, instead, through us, through our soul and body.
Each creation, then, is divine, each is born from the supreme creator. Thus,
every person has God within them, we are all “part or parcel of God”.
Nature
flaunts its divinity and each creation knows how significant they are. The
mountains stand tall and threatening, the flowers blossom with colours of all
kinds, the lakes mirror the yellow stars and the animals roam with purpose.
There exists a cycle, an evolution, a coming and going, a gathering, a feast, a
fruition. It is a playground, a wonderful display of lights, echoes and
vibrations.
But,
man has refused to take part. We have forgotten. Still, there remains the God
within us, a brilliance, a uniqueness that we have yet to realise. Everyone can
sense this for there is an inborn calling within each of us that we are
exceptional in some way, though few will ever discover what that is.
The
majority are all too concerned with what society, their parents, their neighbours,
their religion, their traditions expects of them. However, remove religion,
history and tradition and we leave this world not with a void, but nature,
one’s true self, the extraordinary. This is the god within, the divine will as
Emerson calls it. But, too many of us are a “god in ruins”, an ordinary face in
a dull crowd.
“A man is a god in
ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the
immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.”
“It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of
Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for
all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in
the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of
the earth.”
The purpose behind most of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s life
works, including “Nature”, was to encourage Americans to stop admiring and
imitating European ideals, culture and history. Emerson wanted America to
separate itself and prove its own cultural and intellectual presence in the
world.
The
artists of America, Emerson wrote, should not look backwards into the ruins of
European history, nor should they look beyond themselves for inspiration. For
there is no generation better than the current generation, no past better than
the present.
Instead,
they should honour their own hearts and follow that which is burning in their
spirit. Because trust in oneself is also a trust in nature, or rather “the
supreme being”. And, it is far greater to trust in nature than to follow the
commands of others or imitate the works of people who passed long ago. Each is
a suppression of the true self. For imitation and obedience breeds dreariness,
it is without all the uncertainty and colour of imagination and the soul.
Emerson
wanted America to be a nation of self-reliant, unique, exceptional and
intuitive individuals that rejected the comforts of conformity. This was his
life’s purpose — to hearten the American in
becoming their true, extraordinary self.
Extraordinary
men — William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle to name a few — hold a great faith in
nature, they embrace a deep commitment to their true, authentic self. They do
not tame the chaos within, they do not reduce themselves to facts and statistics,
nor do they follow convention merely because someone tells them to do so.
Great
men rejoice in solitude under the night time sky, surrounded by foothills and
trees, when the stars tell their stories and the animals drum in the distance.
Here, man learns of his relations with the natural world and thus, with himself
also.
“The primary wisdom is
intuition. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go,
all things find their origin.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Harry J.
Stead
https://medium.com/personal-growth/how-to-discover-your-true-self-b1646d5fde1b
No comments:
Post a Comment