I’ve been contemplating about a lot of things for the past few months. Pondering about ideas and possibilities. I wish I can interpret Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” in a decent trail of thoughts. But darn me for even trying, at all. Even after I spent a lot of times to understand Hamlet. Surprisingly, it was not Hamlet or Shakespeare – the master par excellence, it was Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essays I read but not really read and it’s all coming back to me now. His essay of ‘self-reliance’ is an eye opener for me. For me to be original, to be a non-conformist, to understand that it is okay if it is different, to take chances even if the outcome is unknown, because it will all make sense in the end. The final destination that I will reach in the future, where I stand and proudly say; “I never look back because the future waits ahead of me.”
“…There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. [195] See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, [196] I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this…”
Excerpt From: Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Essays.”
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