Self-Reliance(Summary)
By: Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a time of our life in which our conscience wakes up, we start thinking about what surrounds us, the possibility of everything, realizing that we don't live in a bubble any more and it's time to face reality.
Trust in yourself is the key to make your dreams come true, even the greatest men in the world have done it, with enough confidence you can achieve many things.
Being a nonconformist is part of the human nature and it is one of the obstacles that harms this process.
When I was a little kid I remember going to the Church and they asked me a question and what I answered was an importune question with a stupid answer.
So then the kid started to reflect on his answers, but suddenly a friend told him this phrase "The impulses may be from below, not from above". I said "I am the son of Devil and none of my laws are going to be sacred from nature". What you want to speak or say you have to think it before saying it because whatever words comes out of your mouth could be a stupid answer so every words that you say has to be a hard word.
"What I must do is that what concerns me, not what the people think", Waldo wisely puts down on paper an universal truth most people tend to ignore. Everyone, even in contemporary times, is trying too hard to fit in with the crowd, instead of embracing their individual way of thinking and acting, instead of expressing themselves in whatever way they want instead of losing themselves in order to be accepted by society.
The author discusses the transparency of human nature.
He explores how nothing is more sacred to the educated person than the integrity of their own mind, about how it feels that people misunderstand you and how the lines of what's good and what's bad can blur to the point in which you no longer know if they have any meaning. He states that what he considers right is what is according to his individual way of thinking, even if others do not agree. There were so many exemplary were people misunderstanding because they didn't understand things these people were: Pythagoras, Socrates, Jesus, Luther, Copernicus, Galileo and Newton.
For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore, a man must know how to estimate a sour face. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may and concern himself with his shadow on the wall.
Finally don't be scared about being you, don't let the past and society determine your future.
