Recently I have felt like people, even those closest to me, simply don't and won't understand the thoughts I'm having and the things I'm feeling. I've been struggling with this for several months now, trying to figure out how to fix the discomforting feeling that accompanies my views. There are basically two sides to this fight: one, I be who I want to be, think what I feel is right, and have people think less of me, scorn me, tell me "how sad" it is that I feel this way; or two, I suck it up, put on a pretty smile and make the world around me happy all the while feeling horribly guilty and empty on the inside. As you can see, these are two pretty extreme and opposite results so the decision on how to act is a very serious and difficult one.
In my English class I'm taking to finish up my general education courses at school, we've been delving into personal narratives. I kind of find them hard to read and very long and boring, but I try my best to keep up. One exception was when we read Emerson's essay entitled "Self-Reliance." I loved reading this work! In case you aren't familiar with it, it is essentially an essay about not being a conformist to make people happy, and living your life for you--not for the sake of others. If you're interested in reading the entire thing, you can find it here. It really gave me some hope for the hard time I'm having and I felt that it was almost a pep talk for me to just be myself, and live my life for me. Forget everyone else, there's no need to do things simply to please others. It was really inspiring and I'm so glad I read it at this time in my life.
Here are some of the quotes from Emerson that really struck me:
"It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."I am not becoming some sort of hippie transcendentalist or anything, I just wanted to share some of these quotes because I really loved them. Sorry if this was too much. :)
"Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -- `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. "
"There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation. "
"The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them."
