Original Thoughts... Anyone???

I know we didn’t talk much about “Self Reliance” by Emerson in class, but I really enjoyed reading it this week. The fact that he told us we need to become less dependent on other people’s education, and get an education for ourselves really got to me. We spend too much time reading other famous scholar’s works that we don’t really come up with our own unique ideas. They are all dependent on the scholars that have come and gone before us. This reminded me of lyrics from a Newsboys song “Your Love is Better than Life.”

“I dunno if I ever had an original thought, maybe not, maybe so, maybe later, I dunno.”

After I heard that song I started asking myself whether or not I’ve ever had a completely original thought. The idea is rather humbling. Then I read Emerson and he’s telling us that we need to go out and completely isolate ourselves from other people so that we have the freedom to think for ourselves. Then when we come up with our own ideas we shouldn’t conform to the ideas of the people surrounding us. He even says, “but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” This is something that’s easily said, not at all easy to do. We, or I, tend to adapt to the ideas of the people that I’m around, which I know isn’t good but it’s so easy to do. We need to become so confident in our own ideas that we aren’t afraid to stand up for them. We need to be that great man or woman that can be surrounded by a crowd of people, but can maintain his or her original thought.