President's favorite book is Self reliance. Couple of years ago, I forwarded this essay to people I know and the responses were like its incongruous, quixotic et al. The truth is its hard to read since its full of abstractions incomprehensible by the sound byte driven and spoon fed culture. All those memories came back when I read a column bashing Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I wasn't born in this country and Emerson wasn't part of my curriculum in India but yet I can draw analogies to these bashing from the bashings Gandhi receives in India. These great men are like a thorn to us since their life and words are a perceptual remainder of our lack of or ever oscillating conscientious nature. These men are our worst nightmare and we feel immense satisfaction by avoiding their words but yet consoling ourselves by putting them on a demi-god pedestal (calling them "prefect") unattainable by humans (like they were some "different" evolutionary miracle).
My favorite line from Self reliance:
"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."
Those are some beautiful words helping to light up an intellectual spark in youngsters (but age hardly matters here), giving hope to pursue their ideas (not to be confused with dreams) without the fear of rejection and ridiculed.
Lets not talk about those who get the wrong message, hitch-hike on ideas of others and derive immense pleasure by calling it their own, living and dying in that fallacy.
The nature of ideas or visions has always been a cumulative effect passed down from generations, like a relay race, each generation carrying necessary spark to keep the fire lit. The truth in self reliance is courage with humility and it was never about inflated self-esteem.
It's no accident that self reliance depends on the most beautiful words in English language - "I don't know".
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