Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms

Amelia Niemi - Mrs. Kim - 12/18/03 - Transcendentalism Project Personal Reflective Essay

Imagine walking through a forest during the ideal Indian summer. Leaves have fallen, trees are all around, the air is crisp but not chilly. The forest is huge and you can walk anywhere in it, but only for an hour and you will never be allowed to return. Where do you start to wander? Do you even go far from where you are now? Will you investigate the pond you see in the distance, or see if there’s a view from that hill behind you? Do you climb on trees or walk on fallen trees or make a bridge to walk over yonder stream? Do you follow the faint path you see, trodden by feet many years ago, but will remain until the forest retakes the land, or do you make your own way, pushing through briars and bushes to find still denser obstacles? Or do you sit and watch the leaves fall? Whatever you decide to do, you only have an hour so be sure not to waste it.

My forest is a simple metaphor for a choice that I’m going to have to make sooner than I would like – what the hell am I going to do with my life? I’ve been looking at colleges recently, and listening to what my parents say about them. If I chose, I could go to school to pursue knowledge. I could get a degree in philosophy or classical literature, or great books, or any number of other wonderful things that I love, but would require further education, more money spent, to learn something that I would get a ‘real’ job from. I do not understand why college has to be about getting a good job. “I want to be a _____.” Fill in the blank with whatever suits your fancy at the moment. I want to be a renaissance person, have aspired to this ever since I learned the concept. I want to learn, to create films, to write books, design buildings, study history, give lectures, teach, compose music, critique films, program computers, speak languages, perform difficult mathematical operations with only the aid of a TI-83 Calculator.

This is a great ideal, and all, but how am I going to finance such a massive operation? I cannot live on grand ideas alone, nor can ideas, thoughts, concepts magically transform themselves into test tubes, books, bread, or a safe place to sleep at night. We live in the real world in real time. The pessimist sitting on my left shoulder would tell me to shut up and be thankful that I was born white in America with parents who could pay for an excellent education, be thankful that I will never have a day where I go hungry, a night I have to sleep on the streets, be thankful that I am guaranteed a college degree and a job, a career ahead of me. Thoreau, whispering in my right ear, would say that I have the gift (or is it a burden?) to be awake and find a real potential in myself. I do not have to be content with ‘just anything,’ nor do I have to always have stability, or accept it. The pessimist counters this argument: What then? After you realize grand ideas, write something, most likely die in debt, all that knowledge and education that your parents paid for will disappear. Thoreau consoles me: death is natural, it happens to the best of us. Live while you can and don’t do something that would make you miserable. Emerson, appearing behind Thoreau, agrees – the pessimist is telling me not to make ripples, but that is because I should feel grateful for how I was born. Emerson shouts NO! Take the opportunity, seize it by the ears and shake it for all it’s worth. The pessimist, always one to get the last word in, argues ad hominem: Thoreau’s opinion is null and void because he died a virgin. (That was a joke Mrs. Kim, I promise!)

            So what if I do go to school, and spend four years studying world literature? I still know nothing of science or mathematics, or a solid base in history or music. I won’t be able to play guitar or design a rocket ship. There will always be things I cannot do, no matter how much time I spend studying. I wrote a three page explanation about how much it sucks to only have twenty-four hours in the day, which completely limits how many instruments I can play, how many subjects I can study at once, and I realized that you don’t need to be great at everything you do, that it’s okay to not be the best, or even be great. From my right shoulder, Emerson cheers this realization on and Thoreau nods encouragingly. Spending four years just learning about these books will open me up to a wide world, free for me to explore for the rest of my life. Themes reign galore. I could be happy for many, many years just studying this one area of knowledge. I once heard about a professor who spent his entire life studying sine. While I have no idea how one goes about that task, the concept is appealing. I could become a professor and inspire undergraduates to ‘respect the process’ – live each moment of each book they read, understand what each minimal detail means in the huge tapestry. A study of literature seems to be a world apart, completely separate from the outside, ‘real’ world. It’s a protected place; the worst thing that ever happens in a book is when two characters bid each other farewell for the last time. Living like this, hiding away and being the only person out of thousands of characters, gods, goddesses, to grow old, also denies me my goal of being a renaissance person.

            On the other hand, I could go to a college of communications and, much to Thoreau’s despair, write about current events. I could be bold and daring. I could write opinions for the New York Times about foreign policy, have my articles make the front page. I would write about justice and fairness, and be talked about, and argued about, and my stories would be debated over. I could be an investigative journalist, or write about the poor quality of the education system, maybe inspiring people to want to fix things.

            Of course, I cannot personally teach children, I would have to have a teaching degree for that, and why would I want to be a teacher anyways? They make diddly squat. It seems with this statement that the pessimist has won a major victory. Money matters more to me than education, according to that sentiment. With this argument, I also cannot be a musician, although for a time, music was all that mattered to me and even now, I could worship the ground of a great musician and sigh, “if only I could do that!”

            So what of all this? I have come in a complete circle. I cannot spend my whole life in a dusty library, or as a student, or playing music. Thoreau is getting quite angry at me. He shakes his fist, and says that the only reason I cannot is because of money, and he is not completely wrong. There are too many things that I want to do! Emerson calms Thoreau with a section from Self Reliance: “A sturdy [lass]… who… tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already” (Emerson, 32). A person like this, to me, is a remarkable human, but I fear that Emerson’s ideal, alongside my renaissance person ideal, is out of date, because to do these things, it seems that one needs to spend money learning the theory of how to do any of these before one can actually go out and experience what it is like to do any of them.

            That doesn’t mean I have to content myself with just learning what is required for a degree. I don’t have to take every communications class available, if I decide that I want a degree in that. I can get a degree in communications, but I can take classes in physics and calculus and great books and art history. Every tidbit of information is useful. I can gain culture from as many different places as possible. I can see plays, movies, concerts, eat different foods, learn to dance, travel. I can learn something, one tidbit of information about everything, and maybe that will suffice. I can always follow the trail of tidbits about any specific thing, if I so desire. I do not know what “eventually” will bring of this goal. I suppose this is how you become today’s version of a renaissance person.

            But why? What is the use of all this? Why do I want education or experiences anyways? The pessimist says it’s worthless, that I’m going to die and it will be lost but I think he’s wrong. Thoreau says that it’s because I can be awake, Emerson says it’s because at heart I’m a scholar. I think that I’m searching for the same thing Chris McCandles (oh help me please!) was looking for, the same thing Thoreau looked for when he went to live by Walden Pond, and I’ll state this in my terms. I want to look back upon my life and see that, while I have not climbed Everest, while I cannot sing or program a computer, while I have not traveled into outer space or flown an airplane, I have done things, my life was worth living. I want to see that I filled up every corner, left no wall blank (I suppose this is why the walls of my room are covered in postcards and posters). I wrote three pages this weekend, about why being ‘the best’ or ‘the greatest’ was important, but I find that it is not and that work was in vain. Emerson consoles me, because I was not foolish in my consistency and I spoke my opinion in hard words, though today I contradict all I said yesterday. It is not important to be the greatest in anything. Instead, it is important to branch out and build a support for yourself. Know something about everything, know your somethings well, and make sure you live life, because you only get one shot at it.

            To return to my forest, each tree is different from its neighbor and each choice has its own rewards. As long as open my senses and observe all that is around me, my single hour, ever, that I spent there will not have been wasted.