I’ve always hated the phrase “Fake It Till You Make It.” I like to think of myself as an honest person. Or at least as someone who tries to be. I fail more than I’d like to admit, but I think that on balance I’m more truthful than not. Unless that’s just a lie I’m…
WWDD : Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson : 007
Continuing our discussion of “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. “The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse;…
Living Like a Brute : Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson : 006
Continuing our discussion of “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. “What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not….
Waves on the Ocean : Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson : 005
Continuing our discussion of “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their…
An Alien Among Us That’s Just Like Me
We all sometimes feel just so damn different from others. Like strangers in a strange land. And we are. All of us are different. All of us are unique. And that’s a good thing – I’m studying this concept in my analysis/attempted discussion of “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. But… at the same time, we…
You Didn’t Build That : General Thoughts on Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson : 000
I had a huge misconception of what Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson is about. As I go through it, I’m leaning that self-reliance isn’t about being “self-made” or “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps” or “doing it on your own.” We Americans still seem to really love to look up to people that we…
The 40% Rule : Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson : 004
Continuing our discussion of “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of…
Tracy, Lizzie, and Weird Al – Original and Not Conventional : Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson : 003
Continuing our discussion of “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. “I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they…
Growing Strong : Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson : 002
Continuing our discussion of “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cast the bantling on the rocks, Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat; Wintered with the hawk and fox, Power and speed be hands and feet. I had to look up what a bantling was. It’s “a very young child.” Emerson wants us to throw this child on the…
Acceptance : Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson : 001
[Just joining the discussion? Feel free to check out the introductory post.] “Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate; Nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal…