In the fall of 2010, I attained my bachelor’s degree in English Literature, where I found a love for American, classical, and romantic literature. Specifically, I delved into the writings of Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and the rest of the lost generation, along with Homer and Sappho, and perhaps most influential, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Did you know that Emerson was only 14-years-old when he attended Harvard Divinity College in Cambridge Massachusetts, known today as Harvard University?
It’s true! At 14 he enrolled in Harvard College with a full scholarship and won a handful of prizes for his writing. When he was 17, he started to keep a journal and continued it for over half a century.
Emerson (1803-1882) was known to be one of the most thought-provoking American cultural leaders of the mid-19th century. He is my favorite philosophical spearhead known to lead the transcendentalist movement in which he spoke out against materialism, formal religion and slavery. Stating that each individual was put on this earth for a reason. Emerson believed in the integrity of the individual. “Trust thyself,” he urged. “Insist on yourself; never imitate.”
I’ve made so many mistakes throughout my life based on not “trusting myself,” especially in my younger years. Whether it was not following a negative intuition I had about a friend, or not listening to the bad feeling I had about being somewhere I knew I shouldn’t be. Not trusting myself, nor following my instincts had led me into some trouble in the past, which ultimately steered me in the direction of writing the story of my life, The Pace of Nature. Thankfully, learning the hard way more than once has taught me the importance of “trusting thyself,” listening to my inner voice, and more importantly, making my own path, on my terms, which I’ve kind of always done anyway, now I just do so from a much wiser perspective.