Nature

This is the long essay on nature in which not much actually happens.

Seriously, this post isn't "refined" like the others; it's just a raw record of my experiences contemplating nature.





So there I was, sitting on the ledge of the boardwalk at the La Jolla Shores beach. 2:00 in the afternoon. Cloudy. Freezing winds. And I had a chocolate milkshake. "Super nature, Supertramp, and this is...'Super Milkshake'." I think I've been taking "Into the Wild" a little too seriously...in fact, I know this to be true. I didn't have time to write this blog post over the weekend (or do the comments), so I made time....during school. The nurse asked, "you're sick again, Austin?"

"Yeah, I'm real sick. Sick of society, man, society..."

Well that's what Christopher McCandless would have said...

but no, I didn't say that...I'm no dang dirty hippie. I don't mind society at all.

But in any case, I made some time for nature by missing out on an hour of school. No big deal, I guess. How all this is relevant to my study of nature I DO NOT KNOW; it just seems to connect somehow.

La Jolla Shores--the waves aren't too bad today, really (perfect for a beginner like me)--the first thing I noticed as I approached the boardwalk was, "where am I going to sit? There are, like, five benches all around me, there's the wall I could sit on, I could lie down on the beach itself, I could walk along the beach, or I could sit on top of my truck like I sometimes do to get a better vantage...to take it all in. I chose the wall, and so here I am now; trying to contemplate nature. The wind is plowing at no less than twenty miles per hour and it's freezing. I'm sipping my frozen milkshake and, despite the cold, can't help thinking, "dang. This is a good milkshake." For a moment, I'm not so sure that I'm going to be able to find this "nature" that Emerson reveres so fully.

But I see this one dumb seagull standing right in front of me. The birdbrain is just standing there...staring at me like he's never seen a person before. But no, he's just standing there dumbly, like, "I don't know how I got here;" that kind of thing. Then all of a sudden, all of the seagulls on the beach get this surge of ESP and they all take off at once towards the horizon. This leads my eyes to the ocean: dark and surging and vast beyond my wildest imagination. Somewhere beyond this frigid expanse lie other lands; I wonder if some kid in Japan is sitting on the shore and contemplating nature too.

When Emerson goes into nature, what does he think of, what does he look for? --Try not to get distracted-- I think he looks for serenity and calm. And thinking about nature reveals the camness in himself. Nature really does have an almost magical quality to humans sometimes. I remember last summer, at the water polo tournament in O'ahu; the whole team went to this wind tunnel where the wind blew through a mountain pass at sixty miles-per-hour or something crazy like that. A few of the guys had found a trail going up the nearby mountain and they showed it to some of us younger guys. Pretty soon we were going up and up and up and...wow...we aren't freaking stopping! It was like a pilgrimage--a primal journey--into the heart of nature. We got to a flat area devoid of trees halfway up the summit, maybe 200 feet above the wind tunnel (which in and of itself was 1000 feet from sea level; it overlooked a sheer (and I mean sheer) drop). We were standing there, with the wind buffeting the canopy of trees. You could throw a stone into the air and the wind would pick it up and throw it backwards away from the cliffside. You could stand out there and feel like you had mastered nature, looking out over the green jungle and white beaches and then off into the eternal blue expanse beyond. This is how civilization started: a man climbed to the top of a mountain like this and proclaimed, "this is our land." People respect nature enough that they want to have a part of it; maybe they can't do anything with a patch of jungle, but they wanted some of that beauty for their own.

What I'm trying to say is that that was a moment of true love of nature; this right now is not. There are some guys changing out of their wetsuits and cussing fifty feet behind me, and there are these two teenagers making out not thirty feet to the right of where I'm sitting. It's a big place--nature is a big place--couldn't they have chosen anywhere else to sit? Anyhow, all this just isn't natural and isolated enough. When I feel the beauty of nature, like on top of that mountain, I prefer full immersion. Hanging to a tree branch at the sheer edge of that huge mountain looking out over the land that man has carved for himself is a feeling like that, and swimming in the ocean is like that too.
I'm not a surfer, but I really like swimming in the ocean just because I feel so close to nature. I was supposed to have swim practice from 4 to 6 this evening (in a pool), but when I went off to "go swimming," I took my cousin's board and the wetsuit my dad never uses and went surfing instead. It was...interesting. It was choppy and random one moment and then after trying to catch a few waves, these sky clouded up like a storm was coming and the waves got HUGE. Like I said, I'm no surfer. Once they got way overhead, I decided to go in. But from all this I have learned a respect for nature; both for it's beautiful, unconquerable force and by the isolation it can give you. So I can see why Emerson likes it so much.

When Emerson is With his Friends, What Do they Talk About?

"The only way to have a friend is to be one"
"let [a friend] be to me a spirit"

Being a friend, in the Emersonian sense, is to walk the very fine line of both being an active and involved friend and knowing when to back off and let your friend be a solitary being. To do this, you have to speak sincerely with friends, and avoid frivolous conversation; like gossip and asking "how are you doing" when you don't really care how they're doing.

"Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank"

Another thing that two good friends have is trust. Just as a good friend should be sincere in order to invite trust, one should give "audacious trust" to a friend. Say someone is trying to be a good Emersonian friend--being simple and honest and avoiding useless talk--and their friend is going on and on about who likes who and what so-and-so thinks of him or her; gossip. As an Emersonian friend, one would find it very difficult at times to talk to these people.
Speaking of this, I spent one day as an Emersonian friend; and it wasn't the easiest thing to do. The first thing that came to mind was, "wow, I'm going to sound crazy; refusing to talk about meaningless things is just...unnatural." People make frivolous small talk as a normal part of our existance. With many of our friends, we make small talk either because we don't trust them enough to confide in them or because we just don't have anything in mind to talk about. In fact, Emerson tells a story about a man who tried to be a true Emersonian friend:
"I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery [of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought], and omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting--as indeed he could not help doing--for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him."

This was the biggest challenge I faced: trying not to care what other people thought. In fact, most of my friends basically could not stay on a deep, sincere topic for longer than a minute. Whenever there was a lull in the conversation, it would go back to "so, I heard everyone got owned on that chem. test" or something about Winter Formal. Even though I spend most of my time hanging out with guys, the two meaningful conversations I had throughout the course of the day were both from talking with girls. It's strange to think, because I probably had fifteen or twenty substantial conversations with people throughout the day, but girls seemed much more ready to talk about "sincere" things like feelings and emotions than guys. But that's just kinda what we do; guys don't tend to talk about that stuff too often. That's why it felt weird to talk about it with guy friends but not so much with girls. And it's kind of funny how Emerson always talks about his friends as being male--I don't think he ever refers to a friend as she or her--but it seems like being more in-touch with your true self would appeal way more to girls than guys. We're not too big on that stuff; but I guess if I'm going to have to spend some time contemplating nature in the near future, I'm going to get plenty in touch with my inner feelings.
In any case, the second problem I faced was that no one really seemed to know what their inner feelings were; it was like no one I talked to had spent enough time thinking about their own self to vocalize it cohesively. This friend of mine, she has a bit of a dating issue; her boyfriend isn't the smoothest guy in the world, and clearly just as inhibited as any of us. She doesn't quite know what to make of this, because she still likes him regardless; but when we were talking about this, and about Winter Formal, time and time again it seemed like she didn't know enough about herself and the way she thinks to even begin to understand how he thinks.
That's one thing I'm definitely happy about: I may not have it all, but I know who I am at least; and I know, at the psychological level, why I think what I think. And it helps me to figure out why other people think the way they do. But when other people don't seem to know why they think what they think, being an Emersonian friend is a bit of a challenge.
In any case, I believe in the phrase "you are who you are;" and being a strictly Emersonian friend isn't who I am. I think that's the way it is for a lot of us: you have a few good friends who you can open up to, and be a true Emersonian friend, but human society is built too strongly upon hiding your feelings behind meaningless conversation and such to really allow any of us to be true Emersonian friends all the time. It's a good idea, and I like it; but, like so many of Emerson's philosophy, it tends to stand at odds to human nature. We need frivolous conversation, and we need to hide our emotions at certain times; but at least an intelligent person can strive to be a good, sincere friend when it is wanted or needed and be just like every other human being when it is not.

Emerson + Gift Cards = Drama. Oh dear....

Gifts
Emerson has put an awful lot of thought into the act of gift-giving; and considering that I’ve never taken that much time to think about such things, I thought he had some good points to make. He says that the very act of gift-giving is “barbarous” and that the only good gift is one that comes from the heart. A gift purchased with your money and another person’s skill isn’t much of a gift at all; in fact, he says it’s more of an insult than a gift. The person who is given the gift doesn’t want to be helped out; they want to independent. Physical objects are just burdens, then. But if a person needs a gift, like a barefoot man needs shoes, then does Emerson recommend that we give him shoes? This is kind of confusing; he says that not only are gifts “barbarous…apologies for gifts” but also that at the basal psychological level a human doesn’t want to feel dependent on someone else for patronage. And I think I have an idea about this: almost no one in history has spent as much time thinking about the psychological effects of giving gifts on the giver and receiver as Ralph Waldo Emerson, so I assume that if you give shoes to a man who desperately needs them, he’ll appreciate the gift. Now of course this is where the giver must balance the receiver’s needs with that of his pride; Emerson does make a good point that the giver should be very careful with giving gifts that might unintentionally degrade the other person.
—This whole process of giving gifts is a deadly trap, I see; I agree with Emerson that no good can come out of giving artificial gifts and thus one is better to just stay out of that business—
But gifts given from the heart…that’s worth everything. Well, that was one of the few things in this essay that I already knew. Good thing too—because I think it’s the most important. A gift like that is the kind which you can give to anyone, at any time, for free. Emerson was talking about lofty things like loving your best friends (like how the poet should give a poem. Those things don’t exactly come a dime-a-dozen, nor does one give a poem to a random stranger), but I think he should have mentioned the everyday things that anyone can do to make someone’s day better. Just common kindness; if you live in that state, you will inevitably give invaluable gifts to everyone you encounter. Too bad that’s such a rare commodity today. Life is not a philosophical dream world; the giver of common compassion and kindness—the giver of (philosophically) the most valuable gift one can give—is not appreciated like he should be in the real world. This is a perverse world indeed, where the cruel get ahead and the rule of the few over the many prevails. Emerson, your philosophy is among the most admirable I have ever seen, but I simply can’t see the majority of America accepting your philosophy of “love thy neighbor” over their primal human instincts of “kill or be killed.” Philosophy is a human construction, really; and you can’t use it to fight three-billion years of evolution. Some smart people might understand the value of your deep reflection, but for most of the people out there, the time required to think it through is time better spent on something else. That's what has happened all throughout history; and in neither Emerson's time nor our own will it change in any great measure. What the Senatus Populusque Romanus want—what the basal majority out there want—is what the world as a whole has to live with. Good try though, Emerson.

"Emerson's-Guns-Are-So-Massive-That-He-Couldn't-Fit-Through-the-Door-So-He-Had-To-Write-His-Book-Alone-in-the-Forest"

Self-Reliance

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind" --Emerson, "Self-Reliance"



This quote is basically a summary of the whole essay, because it tells how making and pursuing your own choices are more important than friends or what other people think or believe. Your own mind is the ultimate judge of all the various things you encounter, and Emerson urges readers to treat it as just that; and not subjugate it to the opinions of other people.

This quote however is not saying that we should all just sit down on that proverbial rock, like a taoist, and do nothing; it is saying that you should do what you want to do--and put as much passion as you want into it.



To paraphrase the ideas Emerson wrote about:

It is your life, and your choices; at the end of your days, you will regret it if you have spent your life living for someone else. (Try to see beyond your own nose!) Take some time to really think about why you are living the life you are living; and if you're happy with those choices.



I'm pretty big on making choices for myself; it sounds like a dumb concept but I find that, subconsciously, people are often held back from true happiness or fulfillment by what people would think. Take a step back and live life for youurself; as Emerson suggests, begin by choosing for yourself.

It's easy to turn your mind off and blindly follow established norms; and if you do so, at the end of the day you will be no worse off than the majority of the people out there. But dare to break out of those norms--trust your own active mind--and you will be great. Thinking for yourself establishes your values ("Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself"), and teaches you to think critically. It's not easy; but the philosophy of thoughtful action, defining yourself and the things around you as you go, will allow you to gain more knowledge than those who blindly follow, or even those who sit arouund reading obscurely worded books (take Emerson for example...). In other words, get out there and make yourself. In other words, STOP READING THIS.





(This next part is for myself; if this were an essay like Emerson's, I would not hope most readers would read this. I'd rather they stop sitting on that proverbial rock and gt out and make a name for themselves. But regardless:)

Dare to make yourself even better; never stop striving. If you want something, it takes self-reliance to make it happen. There's something I like to call an "inner fire" that exists within every sentient being. When an animal is in dire trouble, their inner fire is what gets them through hard times and cold winters and allows them to persevere. But animals only use that for survival; humans can use this to create a burning desire to accomplish anything in the world. That is personally what I take from Emerson's quote; by breaking free from opressive norms, any given person can ignite their tenacity and ingenuity to accomplish great things.

In theory, this works flawlessly. A human's inner fire is the most powerful and most adaptable tool we possess; but keeping that fire lit is one of the hardest tasks of great men. What was it that kept Julius Caesar away for years fighting the Gauls in order to make a name for himself back in Rome? And what brought us away from earth and into the void of space? Neither of these happened on a whim; both took years of keeping determination alive. I think it is appropriate to say that great accomplishments consist of "one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration (--Ben Franklin)".