One thing about myself is I tend to be negative. I rated Emerson's ideas 10/10. They are really great ideas and the world would be so amazing everyone applied these ideas to our lives. However, I feel that for everyone to do so would only happen in an utopian world. So here are a few quotes and ideas ,from today's discussion, that I agreed with full heartedly and some that I just thought were cliche and kind of a "been there heard that" type of thing.
1."Nothing can bring you peace but yourself"
When I read this quote on Sunday, it immediately captured my attention. It made me stop thinking about my weekly routine or whatever responsibilities I have at this point in my life and tried to remember the last time I was at peace with myself. I couldn't. "Once I graduate, I can be peaceful and happy with myself" "once I loose this amount of pounds, I'd be at peace with myself" "once I get this, then I can be peaceful". Why wait later to be peaceful and for these things or events to bring you peace when you can be peaceful all by yourself now? Life brings obstacles after obstacles and new materialistic items are brought up each day. Once you get what you want, you're going to want more. Once you overcome something, life is going to throw something else in your face again. It doesn't stop. So might as well be peaceful with yourself and your life. Yes, this is a great idea but it sounds like something that comes across of a motivational poster. It's hard to be at peace with yourself especially since we're deep into the flow of society now, that it's hard to search for peace outside of yourself.
2. "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think"
Someone's point this morning went something like "you can't depend on anything or anyone to be there for you all the time. You're with yourself all the time." When I heard that, I remembered a quote that a singer named infinite Weaver said around last year. It popped in my head this morning because I remembered pausing the video when I watched it and wrote what she said on my phone's notes. "It's not selfish to make the right move for yourself. So that in the future, you live a long and happy life and you don't drag people around along for the ride." This whole concept really just spoke to me and actually gives me a bit of motivation. It's your life and in the end you have to make yourself happy and sometimes being selfish is a necessity. Yeah, helping another person and being there for someone is wonderful and all but again, it's your life. You have to choose between living it for yourself, doing what you want and die as a happy person or living your life for everyone else and die ending up not doing what you wanted to do to make you happy and feel like you lived a good or successful life. (Here's the link to the video I was talking about incase anyone was wondering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_zzdN5WQ5I )
3. "Man is his own star".
It can be reassuring that everyone isn't just a tiny spec in this huge universe and is an actual star but this is just another cliche quote to me. Where's the proof? There are billions of people on this planet yet the universe is such a humongous and diverse place. What kind of impact do we have on this infinate universe?
4."It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration"
Yesterday in class, there was a discussion on what the word amelioration meant. Everyone seemed to have a different definition and they said it in terms of religion. I found a different definition when reading this on Sunday: the act of making something better or improving it. After finding the definition, what Emerson said in this quote kind of made sense to me. What I think he is saying is all men and women have an idea of improving society but no one does anything about it I agree with this idea because it's true. We have ideas on improving society(aka ourselves) and not going with the flow but we don't change anything because we have gotten so used to the way things are now that it's almost like we don't know how to change them.
5. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
He's saying that when we see something genius, we see our own thoughts that were rejected. I feel like Emerson in this quote is giving everyone too much credit or trying to give us more motivation (here I am being a Negative Nancy again haha). What I mean is the reason why I disagree with this quote is because I think some people come up with some ideas that you and I would never come up with in our life. I also feel that everyone comes up with different ideas that no one has ever heard of in their life. This is because every single one of us thinks differently and have our own perspective of things. Yes, I think sometimes this quote can be true but it isn't correct all the time.
Another thing that stuck out at me in class today was when we were talking about fortune. It was thinking about it and I have agreed with this concept for a while. It was something about how if we do something truly amazing and someone does the same exact thing and they get rewarded but we don't, then we kind of feel that life is unfair. I feel that all of this is true, this is just my opinion, but it seems to be that some people are just extremely lucky and that the cards are always in their favor and then there's people like me who feel absolutely unlucky and feel that we are never going to be rewarded in life because life is just simply unfair. That's just me being pessimistic as usual but that's what I thought during the time.
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