Post 4: Nature

I went up to the roof deck of my condominium complex and lied down, looking at the clouds, stars, and listened to the ocean in the still night. At first my environment proved to be a great place to collect and organize my thoughts, but after a good five or ten minutes it became a great place to lose them. First of all it was very relaxing, one of the side affects to the serene beauty. I was amazed at the chaos of the world in contrast with the simplicity of nature and how they are one. My mind began to wander and my thoughts went off on a tangent: 

How I could be experiencing two completely contradictory things at once (being lost in my surroundings but able to find and center myself.) It is interesting how opposites work together always. Everything that is real is balanced and everything that is not real balances the real, and that s only as far as my stream of consciousness is able to take it. Because the words 'lost' and 'found' contradict each other while they are eternally linked, it made me think that language and words limit expression sometimes. Sometimes the words we need to properly, completely, and truthfully express something don't exist and therefore people just keep using more words until they have properly expressed themselves. The only way to get rid of miscommunication would be to get rid of communication itself. And therefore if you try to completely get rid of evil you would have to get rid of some goodness...

Well anyways a lot of strange streams of thoughts and ideas came through my head during my nature experience, until all at once it all stopped. All that was left was nature and I was a part of it. No thoughts, just peace. There is where I found the true beauty.

What I learned from the experiment is how much the specifics of my life don't matter to nature or to God. That my experiences live only in me and not nature. It helped me realize things that really matter, my life force, love, friendship, life itself, death, goodness, and truth, etc. There is so much else that we spend so much time thinking and worrying ourselves with that really does not matter in the end at all. As Emerson said, nature gives an alternative perspective on the world.

Post 3: Friendship

This experiment was a difficult one. It was hard to benevolent and kind without being polite or fake. Over the course of the day I ended up not being an Emersonian friend to everyone every second of the day but to my close friends and when looking at the day as a whole, I was successful. The reason I was not able to be an Emersonian friend to everyone is because there are people I consider my friends with who are not peers and therefore they deserve a certain amount of respect that required my to hold back from thinking aloud in front of them.

The experience though made me a much happier person by the end of the day. Instead of  awkward looks and mumbled words, the halls were full of casual yet short conversation and smiles. What surprised me the most was how free it made me fell with the lack of censorship or internal filter. It gave me that 'Life is good' feeling.

With my close friends, it went well also. We refrained from going through the normal greeting rituals and small talk because with them it was and is unnecessary. The whole day I wasted no time and just acted upon my feelings and thoughts. The few times during the day when I was not in the best mood were the hardest. I had to filter my actions and outward appearance a bit so I wouldn't have people asking if I was okay or anything to that extent. What people don't realize is that it is okay to feel down, especially if it is only for a little while. Overall it was a very interesting and liberating experience.

Post 2: Gifts

Gifts are tricky things. I always have trouble in giving them. For it to be a true gift it requires sacrifice of something of worth, whether it is time or work or means the giving up of something that is dear to you. Gift giving conflicts with society as well. This is because society has set times when we are to give someone a gift such as Christmas or on birthdays. The problem with this is that we have an obligation to give gifts at these times and therefore it takes away meaning and value from them, because they are expected. It is merely luck when you receive a truly amazing gift on one of the special occasions.

Receiving gifts can be just as difficult. We all hate to fake emotion but sometimes gifts are actually apologies for gifts or what can happen is that you get a great gift but it doesn't get the reaction out of you that the giver expects and wants. In that case it is the fault of the giver because when giving you should have no expectations but most people are not Emersonian givers.

The best gift that I have given and received from my experience is love. Because there are many gifts that come from love. The small ones tend to be the best. The best gifts are the ones that you cannot hold, except for in your memory; the ones that make you smile and you can't stop; the ones that create a genuine connection between two people. Those gifts are hard to find but you must hold on to them tightly when you receive them and must give them when you are at a time and place where you are capable.

Post 1: Self Reliance

"We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents."
-We are too scared to fully expose our true selves, to be left vulnerable to the world, so we never fully express that very essence of God within us.

There is a divine idea in all of us. God lives in all of us, in our souls. This is fundamentally who we are, it is our life force and it resides in the very depths of ourselves. It transcends our body and mind in its eternal nature. Whether our conciousness is lost with age, time, or death. The soul will live on. Each one of us has this essence and it is unique, else society would make all of the people of the world the same. From this comes emotion, felling, and expression. The latter of which wehave nearly full contorl of. Sometimes when feelings get too overwhelming that we temporarliy lose control of how much we express. We are able to hold back emotion and even use our mind and memory in order to create false emotions as actors do.
This brings us to Emerson's idea of half expressing ourselves. We choose what we want other people to see us express. This ability is both a good and bad thing. It is good in order to spare others from the possibly terrible feelings we are feeling and becasue it allows us to cheer people up and other such things. The good aspects center themselves aound interaction with other people. The mallous elements of this ability concentrate on the issue of our own individual emotional and mental health. For example we can tend to hold feeling back, in denial, and so unhealthy feeling can build up within. This is the half expression we as humans take part in quite frequently, varying from person to person.
The reason we only express part of ourselves is because we are ashamed and scared of what other people, society, and the world think of the divine idea. It leaves us so exposed and vulnerable but if you have strong self reliance (which is the subject of the essay) it should not matter, for you will be strong and selfconfident.