Voicing My Experience

A Story by Critohuitzi

A small declarative essay, writen in my 3rd year of high school

From the pith of my understanding, I had come to realize a perspective of our world; premature. It included me as a disillusioned spectator, repulsed by the bitter squabbles of his society, but above all, in awe at the ignorance that the comforts of repetition have brought to his people. No more or less had this perspective come to fruition that I was introduced to the writings and teachings of the transcendentalist professor Ralph Waldo Emerson. From the very first line the man captivated my attention and arrested the unrelenting model of a mindless society powered by the mass media and its clandestine government. The drone of the hive was silenced, henceforth a quieter opinion was voiced; one of the individual. On Self Reliance is the literary piece that connected to my life and presented a choice between passiveness and action. Emerson argues that the individual must accept who they are; to silence the pursuit of conformity is the best course of action, thus my quest to understand and act on these roles shaped my life in different aspects.

Inquisitive, yet apprehensive, at first, but once I puzzled over the first phrase of Emerson’s writings I understood his sense of ego, “There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion” (pg.364) First and foremost, this informs me that responsibility above all else is essential to the independent person. Yet, reflecting back, I know that I have not exercised this order to the extent to which I accept my own actions. Following the months after reading this, to place these words into reality, both the written and spoken word was modified to reflect this new way of thinking. Assignments were written with the full understanding that the author would accept the consequences of what was voiced. Yes, my classes were affected by Emerson’s words, true, my actions were not perfect, but that was the contract to which I had agreed with Mr. Emerson. Physics, American Literature, and the arts suffered the extent to which the reader was prepared to interpret my new resolution.

Envy in this context is synonym for ignorance, ignorance to what is behind the mask that the admiration is wearing, ignorant to the actions that the other individual has committed yet not accredited for; it is the state of living in a flawed wish, one that does not forgive. Communications have allowed us to transform the minds of various individuals simultaneously. For better or worse, all are married into cycles of information, but the reports being sent through have left us with a taste for conformity, for mutual acceptance by any means necessary. Abandon, I must, notions of wishful admiration for self absorption of becoming another entity entirely. According to Emerson, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” (pg.364) stating that the individual has no business in compliance with a system that does not reflect his or her values, which should be kept in tact no matter the setting. Live as I might in a technological age that is increasingly becoming uniform, I shall always be. “Imitation is suicide”, I began to reason in this mindset. Following the rules for self government, to imitate another individual or for that matter the ideal, requires that I eventually sacrifice my philosophy, creeds, and hence my individualism.

“The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude...” (pg. 365) Typical, it is of the high school which I attend, a standard of having a society based on popularity. Popularity depends on a drone’s conformity to the ideologies of the student body, within the confines of popular moral acceptance. Walking, dodging, shoving, and marching to a clandestine beat, the halls of the education institution which I attend are packed with dozens of faces, mostly a blur, but some are noticeable. In uniform, this new class of students has widened their horizons to what is acceptable and what is not; stray but a little and faces turn sour. It is me who walks in the halls, yet out of all the freedom of speech and self preservation rhetoric, the individuals remain in consensus as to how an individual must think and act. “It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own...” (pg. 365) True, if you query any student as to the ideal individual the response averages to three basic guidelines: responsible, intelligent, and dubious. Yet, in the multitude, each one walks with an air of importance, but not of self assurance, but of acceptance, the type that one feels once becoming part of the whole. I, like almost anyone, love the reassurance of a people, a home, a community to which to belong, but I, like other mavericks, have come to the understanding that the individual must remain self sufficient.

Self sufficiency comes with a price: trust. Physics, we are not only to immerse in information, it is in our best interest to analyze and commit to the demonstrations in class. Once this task is accomplished, a presentation to the class is paramount for our learning experience. A week after my resolution to Emerson’s words, I found myself in a dilemma. Having replied the problem presented to the class, I began to doubt if my response was spot on. Observing that my peer’s answers were differentiating, the natural sentiment of doubt began to overwhelm me. Pressure surmounted, multiple choices appeared as I began to doubt. Buckling at the last moment, replicating someone else’s argument, it was with private humiliation that I forced my hand. To my dismay, what I had written earlier was correct but in panic, I committed one of the very things which I had resolved not to do, hence I took this line to heart: “Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

“Speak what you think now is hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today- ‘Ah, so you shall be misunderstood.’” (pg. 366) I have changed; approaching situations with a new perspective and self reassurance, my failures lead me to feel nothing but the excitement of intellectual adventure. Where once I would agonize over a failing grade, I now look to that as a flag for self-improvement. The possibilities are endless, but mean that not announce that I have learned a great deal in trivia. Still, I have a long way to go and time to spare; it gives me great satisfaction to put Emerson’s ideas into action in the foreseeable future.