Nature and Selected Essays Book

The world is pliably linguistic. Have faith in the way you see it! Allow yourself to do what you do and feel what you feel. Be a healthy individualist. Respect your fellow woman and your shared source.

Hippies talk all the time about universal spirits and mother nature and blah blah blah... none of them give plausible or interesting explanations of what they mean. Emerson points out very simply that Nature--everything that exists outside of me--makes up the common store of our language. Nature is what we all draw from to create and recreate. Think about that! That gives me an inherent reason to respect everything I meet, because we all have the same resources. I am no better and no worse, huh?

Read "Circles." There you get "reform," the expansion of the self onwards and outwards. I am so attached to certain aspects of myself (e.g. aptitude, personality, preferences, goals, causes) that the prospect of letting them go--just to try it out--is terrifying. In my fear I say, "that's just who I am." "I can't change who I am." "I'm here, I'm Lucas, get used to it." "I need to save the polar bears."

This we suppose to be individualism today! False confidence in a false self! Emerson makes me let go of these things I hold on to--everything I had thought was mine--but then shows me that I did not lose them at all! When I think I'm lost, I find I've expanded my circumference.

Read Emerson!