The Wisdom of Emerson

The Wisdom of Emerson

When I was in college, I coined the phrase "extremely moderation" - which was my concept of how I found my center. It was the very messy process of exploring the outer limits of both right and left, hard and soft, good and bad.

If it sounds exhausting, it was. And is. If we could live our lives on a tropical island, or possibly at our favorite beach or mountaintop, I suspect life would be much simpler. We would be living with only one side of the coin - the quiet and calm one. The tranquil and scenic one.

Unfortunately, we are not often afforded the luxury of ideal. Instead, we live in the real. Yes, we sometimes on our journey travel to the mountaintop - where everything is clear and the air is pure. But, for the journey to continue, we must leave the mountain and travel through the valley below. Because, there are further and higher mountains we can see in the distance, but to reach them we must leave our current home.

The duality of home and away, the tension between staying here and going further on is the journey extolled by writers from Homer to Joseph Campbell as The Hero's Journey. And, although we don't often think of ourselves as heroes, it is undeniably true that you and I are the hero of our own story. Whether we accept the challenge of that - whether we choose to live heroically or numb and disconnected - is a choice only we can make.

And, the difficulty of the choice, is that it is not a one and done sort of decision. Even the right path chosen provides many detours and off ramps. Just because I chose to be Zen today - and no matter how blissful yesterday might have been - every day is a decision.

This may sound discouraging, but only if yesterday was a good day. If yesterday was a mess - particularly a mess of my own making - it is now past. And so, today, is a new choice. If yesterday I left the highway to explore a side road, I may have found a dead end or even a treacherous highway. The good news, is both autos and humans have a REVERSE as well as a DRIVE.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of course, Emerson was right. It is easy to think so, but hard to live as though it were true right now, right here. I cannot promise you tomorrow will be better than today. No one can promise you that. But, I can promise that life is worth living - as long as we continue to make the choice to live it awake and not asleep. Feeling, and not numb.

Two final thoughts from Emerson:

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

And all the people said, amen.




Sent from my iPad

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