Season 4 Podcast 59 Self-Reliance Concept 6 To Thine Own Self Be True

Season 4 Podcast 59 Self-Reliance Concept 6 To Thine Own Self Be TrueI have selected ten concepts from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Self-Reliance. Each concept expands the virtues and variations of Self-Reliance or warns of the vices of the ways we forfeit Self Reliance:·      Concept 1: Blind Obedience·      Concept 2: False Charity·      Concept 3: Truth·      Concept 4: Faith ·      Concept 5:  Non-Conformist·      Concept 6: To Thine Own Self Be True·      Concept 7: Self-Reliance·      Concept 8: Character·      Concept 9: God·      Concept 10: SolitudeIn this podcast we shall explore Concept Number Six, To Thine Own Self Be True. Many are familiar with Shakespeare’s Hamlet when the garrulous old Polonius gives counsel to his son Laertes who is going off to college. There, my blessing with thee.And these few precepts in thy memoryLook thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,Nor any unproportioned thought his act.Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar.Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel,But do not dull thy palm with entertainmentOf each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. BewareOf entrance to a quarrel, but being in,Bear ’t that th’ opposèd may beware of thee.Give every man thy ear but few thy voice.Take each man’s censure but reserve thy judgment.Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,But not expressed in fancy—rich, not gaudy,For the apparel oft proclaims the man,And they in France of the best rank and stationAre of a most select and generous chief in that.Neither a borrower nor a lender be,For loan oft loses both itself and friend,And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.This above all: to thine own self be true,And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.Farewell. My blessing season this in thee.How can anyone have true liberty without being true to oneself?  Emerson said in Self-Reliance:A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily, everybody in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;—and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients.