It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
The world is powered by passionate people, powerful ideas, and fearless action. What’s one strong belief you possess that isn’t shared by your closest friends or family? What inspires this belief, and what have you done to actively live it?
I just realized that I feel uncomfortably naked when I share my Emerson Challenge blog postings on Facebook. That realization let to the question of how could I ever write (and allow to be published!) the autobiographical book that people often tell me I should write. From that awareness, I immediately remembered the discomfort I felt when reading today’s challenge.
I can think of several strong beliefs that aren’t shared by my closest family and friends. As I imagine listing the beliefs and making them known to others, I am struck by the same sense of feared nakedness. I know what I believe and what I’ve done to actually live out the belief but the thought of risking public knowledge of it still rattles me.
Then I think of what I read in the Self-Reliance essay today—all the ways that Emerson spoke of “to thine own self be true”and realize I am once again confronted with the dilemma presented in the quote above. Earlier this week I thought my challenge just was not to be distracted from remembering my own opinion in the busy-ness of life. Now, I see the deeper challenge is my concern for the ‘world’s opinion’ and how that concern silences my response to today’s challenge prompt. When I think of naming a strongly held belief not shared by my personal world opinion—my friends and family—I want to evade and avoid the question.
I spent many years as a public speaker, being rated on a 1-10 scale every day I worked with an audience. Often I would be asked a question that had at least two different answers—the one that was desired by the questioner and the one that was I thought was true. Each time this happened I would compare the risk of saying something I believed was true but controversial and likely to be met by audience disapproval with the “safe” answer. The safe answer wasn’t necessarily false but it wasn’t the whole truth either. Over time I learned that when I sold out for the safe answer I was left with a sense of shame and inadequacy.
But none of those audience questions seem as risky as telling the truth today about a strongly held belief and how I’ve lived it out. Perhaps it is because the beliefs I am thinking about today are more central to my sense of self than the types of questions audiences asked. And it is Emerson who has prompted my thinking along existential and metaphysical lines.
I’m thinking that perhaps there are beliefs that are more peripheral and some that are more central to my sense of self. Sharing the peripheral ones seems to be less risky than the central ones, but isn’t that Emerson’s whole point? Perhaps the more peripheral ones aren’t beliefs at all but instead are issues of fashion, convention, habit and convenience. The central ones—the ones that seem to be so risky to share publicly—are issues of the nature of reality, the nature of God and what I think our purpose is. I see the safety to be found in preaching the old religion as Emerson describes it when he writes, “ Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother’s, or his brother’s brother’s God.”
So I haven’t answered the challenge question yet, have I? Let’s say I’m still circling around it, trying to find a comfortable place to settle in…
