Self-Reliance Essay

Aatem Cooke

July 22, 2018

Write Alaska

Society

What my idea of Emerson’s message is independence and more specifically is independence of

society. He talks about being your own person and that only you know your full potential. Later on in

the excerpt of Ralph Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” he goes on about society being against individuality

instead valuing conformity and Emerson promotes them to be nonconformist or original, to know

one’s place in life. Then Emerson talks a lot about progressing and to keep on changing, “....

contradict every thing you said to-day.” and it shows that people change their opinions and ideas

everyday, nothing lasts forever. The central theme in the excerpt is independence of society in

decision of how to live your life, accepting one’s place in life, and continuously changing.

Throughout life people will tell you that you can’t do it, that it’s not your strong suit but people

don’t start out as experts in their field, everyone was once terrible. Like Einstein once said,

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life

believing that it is stupid.” and no one else but you knows whether you’re a fish or a monkey. So you

must not imitate because imitation is suicide and that none but he knows what that is which he can

do because people are one of a kind and society treats them as the same(Emerson). It’s seen in

magazines, articles, tv shows, in just about every part of people’s life society is something telling

them what to do, what to buy, and who to hang out with; it’s friends and family, it’s the ad on tvs and

phones, and the idols influencing you with their lives.

“Accept the place the divine providence has found for you,” - Emerson, I interpret this as

appreciating the things you have in life. This idea is mentioned throughout like when he talks about

envy being ignorance. When your envious of others you generally think of what you don’t have and

desire that, but many times that blinds you from the important things. Like when one sibling gets ice

cream everyone else wants one too, it’s similar monkey see monkey do or monkey see monkey eat.

So I think his message is not to compete with others to see who has more stuff but to value what is

already there and progress. Though it isn’t apart from society it’s necessary to where you are within

the world.

Finally is the idea of continuously changing, to not be tied down by what you said yesterday but

to say what you truly think, because people don’t stay the same forever and every single day changes

their ideas and beliefs. The people he mentioned have all been people against society and the

thinking of the time they lived in, they had ideas differing like Isaac’s laws of motion or Socrates and

him being one of the founders of Western thinking. Emerson is saying that it’s important of what you

think of to be your true thoughts and you don’t need to have your peers’ opinion or your past

opinion.

The central idea of being individual of society is present in Emerson’s writing about having made decision of your own will, being apart of the world, and continuously moving through life. Though Emerson didn’t know about tvs and cell phones and social media his ideas still apply to the world around us, just in a different way of what he expected. He wanted the messages of being yourself and continuously growing to get to the reader, but it applies to more today because of how much smaller our world has become.

Margaret Kava

Write Alaska

19 July 2018

Self-Reliance

Finding ourselves, trusting ourselves, and knowing ourselves. What do they have in common? They all lead to something: Finding our path. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “ Self-Reliance,” from 1841, has shown us what we need to find out what our paths leads to for us. We need to know and find about ourselves to thrive and stride to success.

“ We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.” The power of finding ourselves is the first step to finding our paths’. Emerson is telling us that we don’t express fully of who we are to the people around us. We all tend to hide in what people want us to be and not who we want to be. That is the problem we face in finding yourself. If we don’t find out what we want to be then we will never be happy. We should not be ashamed or afraid of who we are.

Once we find ourselves then we must trust yourself. Emerson told us “ Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to the iron string.” We all trust someone in our lives, maybe more than we trust ourselves but, once we know what we want we must trust ourselves to reach the goal. No one can stop us from achieve our goal but ourselves. We must believe that we can do the impossible to achieve the impossible.

After finding ourselves and trusting ourselves, we must know ourselves. Knowing ourselves shows that we can do what we need to do to succeed with knowledge of the future. “ A foolish consistency is a hobgoblin of little minds” this shows us what Emerson believes in what knowing ourselves means. We should know our wants and needs fairly quickly, we need to know this so nothing can holds us back.

The essay Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote “ Self-Reliance” from 1841, has shown us the steps of finding ourselves : find ourselves, trust ourselves, and know ourselves. These steps help you try us find what we need to do to succeed in life.

Tava Kairaiuak

Thinking for Yourself

It is extremely easy, especially in this world, to become a follower and forget to think for yourself. We become lost in what others are doing and forget we can have opinions and original thoughts. “Self- Reliance” an essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1841, explores themes such as nonconformity as a way to experience goodness, trusting yourself and what has been given to you and the importance of having a mind that you can change.

Nonconformity, by definition is the failure or refusal to conform to an existing ruling or practice. Emerson speaks plainly about this topic and says, “Whose would be a man must be a nonconformist.” To me this goes back to my main point about being able to think for yourself and not be afraid to not conform. Emerson again hints at the idea of not conforming and thinking for yourself, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world…”

Emerson introduces the idea that you should trust yourself and what has been given to you. I think the quote, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” communicates trust in yourself and realize that you have a purpose on this world, which can also be interchanged with thinking for yourself. To further elaborate on the idea that every human has a purpose is a quote that says, “Accept the place the divine providence has found for you…”

Changing one’s mind is often looked at as a negative thing, but Ralph Waldo Emerson thinks that it’s crucial to being self- reliant. It shows your are able to think for yourself and change your mind. For example, if you thought one thing and then learned new information you would change your way of thinking and take account of this new information. Changing your mind also keeps things interesting. Emerson says, “With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.”

“Self- Reliance” an essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson is a piece that embraces the fact that you do not have to conform, you should trust in yourself and your intuition and it is crucial to constantly and be able to change your mind. You should see his words and question, are we really self- reliant, should we be striving to be self- reliant or do we even want to be self-reliant?

Self Encouragement

One decision can set you up for life but you must have conformity to be strong. The truth behind being so strong is everyone struggles in their everyday life. Trying your best is what Ralph Waldo Emerson is trying to communicate in his “Self-Reliance” essay in 1841. Be independent, strong, and trust yourself.

You could be so foolish because something great is within your reach but you just don’t know it. “Great men have always done so, and confined themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their, predominating in all their being” this phrase is so strong that I believe it. Live and trust yourself.

Sometimes in life you have to be independent because not everyone has the same intentions as you. Be your own person because you don’t want to live in a society where everyone is the same. “He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness”, look for own goodness. Go in deeper to find the true meaning of goodness.

People set up resolutions to defeat their old self and old demons but why? For me people come out of their fragile shells to be stronger and tougher. Finding yourself goes a thousand ways like “To be great is to be misunderstood” that goes even stronger. Set foundations to elaborate and grow on. Only reminder to be great and strong is you only live once.

So in conclusion Emerson was saying try your best in everything. Be independent, strong, and trust yourself because you are here for a reason. Have faith in yourself because you cant hide all your life. 
- Keoni

You make independence

Adrian Cornejo

  You make independence

     

Why do us people always want to rely on other people and not be their own person? In this essay I'm 

going to be talking about the three main points of being independent. The main points are working hard, trusting yourself, and changing your mind.

The first rule of independence is hard work. One reason hard work is important is because if you don't do hard work, how do you work independently? For example, hard work is being independent. Since I was little my dad has taught me how to change the oil or the tires in a car and the outside maintenance so that when I'm older I can be my own independent man and not need to rely on other people. If you don't work hard, it doesn't matter whether it is school or work, you always rely on people to copy off of or to find someone to do your work and that's not independent. That is why I think hard work is a key point to being independent and not relying on anybody else.

The second key point to being independent is to always trust yourself no matter what. This is a big one because if you don't trust on the the things you think about, you let other people look better than you and you're not letting your smartness shine. So maybe you're in gym class and you guys are playing soccer and you get the ball and you pass it instead of shooting it. Like you didn't trust yourself, but relied on someone else. If you trusted yourself you maybe would have made the goal and had the glory. Another example is if you are buying a house and you don't know which one to buy. You ask a friend which one to buy. You should know yourself better than anyone so you shouldn't be asking somebody else for a house that you are buying and calling home just because you don't trust yourself. That's why I think that trusting yourself is important, because you should know what you want or you just never know if you get an achievement for doing what you need to do and not needing anyone's opinion.

My third key point is to change your mind. When I think of this point being independent it brings me 

back to the point of trusting yourself. So the second example I used for trust yourself I talked about how you should trust yourself to pick your house because you should not rely on someone to pick a house for you when you are going to be living there. The reason this point brings me to that is that even if you don't know what house you want is that you can always change your mind on which house you want to pick, or even if you are thinking of looking at new houses. That is one of the reasons I think changing your mind makes you independent. I think changing your mind shows that you have other ideas and that you can think for yourself. independent.

In my essay I talked about the three main point that I talked about in the thesis. I talked about how changing your mind lets you get better looks at stuff and that working hard will bring you the best things in life. Those are the reasons why working hard, changing your mind, and trusting yourself is the rules of being independent. 

Self-Reliance

The Essay of Free Thinking Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson

In life, there are many things you must do yourself, like learning to do something. No one can learn for you, people can teach you or, you can teach yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson says not to follow what others say is normal and think for yourself don’t always rely on others. “Self-Reliance” was written in 1841, by Ralph Waldo Emerson on the importance of hard work, trusting yourself, and having the ability to change your mind and think for yourself.

 Emerson speaks on the importance of hard work for achieving your goals. “A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best” in this Emerson is talking about how when you try and put your hard work in to something you should be proud, even if you mess up it was yours and you worked on it and tried your hardest. This was one of the most powerful statements in the whole essay because he touches on two of the main points of this essay work hard and trusting yourself.

Then Emerson also talks about Trusting yourself. He even just says “Trust thyself” trusting yourself is an important part of Self-Reliance, if you don’t trust yourself how could you live? You wouldn’t be able to believe in your goals or ideas. You would be able to do just about nothing and you would always doubt yourself. Trusting yourself is key to SELF-reliance.

Lastly Emerson goes on to talk about changing your mind and thinking for yourself. “Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard word again, though it contradicts everything you said to-day.” in this quote Emerson is saying its OK to change the way you believe or change what ideas you have or think. If we all kept our same way of thinking we would never learn from each other or experience.

Emerson wrote this in 1841 but it is still relevant today. He spoke on the importance of hard work, free thinking and believing in yourself. He hoped to teach us how to be self-reliant. We all could use these things in our own lives. If it is watching the news and believing the media or your own ideas to building a table and it having one short leg and still being proud that you put effort and hard work in to something.


Jerry Morales

Self-Reliance Interpretation

There are many situation that requires for you to make a decision that can make you change your life.  Our decisions and our choice what make our identity, personality and our toil for stuff. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his essay, “Self-Reliance,” in 1841, his essay still today teach people about truths today.  In his essay he urges us to find truth to your way, to exert oneself, and to find you way to think.

To many people try to find the truth to there way and if they can’t find there's they either try to force it upon you.  That's where you find the truth to your path. In this essay it says “To be great is to be misunderstood.” that line means everyone wants to be great but what you see is a misunderstanding about being great.  You find your truth to your path you'll will be great because you did it on your own. He also states “Trust thyself: Every heart vibrates to that iron string.” it means to trust yourself because with every step of the way your heart will lead you to the truth of you path.

People exert themselves and not seceded.  What I mean by that is people don't usually like hard work.  I'll ask you a question, would you be happy and fulfilled to make something even tho it don't look good or get something and say what ifs and if I had they would?  Personally I would take happy and fulfilled. He states “It is a deliverance which does not deliver.”  That is self explanatory.  You work hard get great results, but if you don’t work hard more what if and if I had.  What i am saying work hard because big things come out of hard work like big paycheck, promotions, and much more. “A man is relieved and gay when he put his heart into his hard work and done best”

To find the way you think that's on you how you interpret this.   “ Self-reliance is its aversion in loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”  People think on what customs they were raised upon, some don’t.  The fact is that Emerson tries to tell from his essay that You create your world how you want it to be.  You create the way you think. You are the main key to the way you choose the way you interpret things. There are two ways for you to think.  It's the way people want you to think and they way you want to think. “These are those voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter the world.”   The voice that guided you here will not be there to guide you while your in the world so you wont have someone telling you how to thing. You think how you want to think in the world.

In conclusion, Emerson essay “Self-Reliance” has much more to say. You will learn many meaning behind his stories, books, and essays.  What I learn about hard work, the truth to your way , and the way you think was only what I interpreted from it, but you, the reader of this interpretation, should read it too.

Chester Tapafua