“Greatness”

A not-so-little-something I had to write for my American Lit class…my (including but not limited to) reflections on a passge from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think.  This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.  It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.  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
C.S. Lewis stated that “I believe in [Jesus] as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”  When I view a Picasso, listen to Beethoven, and read Emerson, I do so through the crimson colored glasses of Jesus’ unparalleled love for me, and my love for Him (which is negligible in comparison to the former).  I do not negate the perspective of the artist himself, or that of those who are not myself, but I take it in the context of truth, as defined in the Bible (but that definition is another can of worms for another fishing trip).
“What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”  Therefore, “what must I do?”  In the Biblical book of Mark (12:28-31), Jesus says that “The foremost [commandment] is…you shall love the Lord your God with all you heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.  The second…you shall love your neighbor as yourself.“ As multidimensional as Jesus’ teachings may be (the surface of which cannot be scratched in the few sentence I have here formed), at the heart of every word He speaks lie these two all encompassing commandments.  These are how I define “what I must do.”  Also, in John 21:22, when Jesus tells Peter (one of His disciples) of the manner in which he will die, Peter asks “Lord, and what about this man?” referring to John (another disciple). Jesus responds “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me.”  My only responsibility is to follow Christ wherever He may lead, and not to worry about what man says of me, or what he does.
“This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.”  Simply put, doing “What I must do,“ and having no concern for what people think, is easier said than done, both in theory and reality.  However, the execution of such a rule, implies Emerson, defines a man as great, while failure to do so characterizes him as common.  As I read these words, God reminds me that “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me (Phil. 4:13).”  It is not of my own ability that I can love Him as He deserves, and others as myself, but God enables me to do so.  This does not mean following Him and His commands suddenly becomes effortless, but possible.  In Matthew (20:26-28), Jesus defines “greatness” in terms of servitude; since He exists as the ultimate benchmark for selfless servitude, and loving him as “I must do” means becoming like Him (in character), I “must” be a servant, which defines me as “great;”  in theory.  In reality; I have a long way to go.  I am seeking to do “what I must,” and by Christ’s strength, love Him and others; however, I know I do not do so, not remotely, to the degree which I ought; as such, I am common.
“It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”  As Emerson continues to elaborate on the idea doing what we must to achieve “greatness,” he describes the difficulty in this, since people are constantly telling us that we are wrong, and they are right.  Since my duty is to love Jesus with everything I am, and my neighbor as myself, people will make it harder to do so by telling me I am wasting my time, am a “close-minded” conformist, and that I am missing out on what they have to offer.  I submit that to live a life dedicated to following Jesus in our post-modern, relativistic world is to rebel against the social norm of this day and age, as a salmon rebels against the flow of the stream to reach its destination.  This is neither an easy task, nor an impossible one, but the opposition of the stream flowing against him makes it all the more difficult to achieve.
“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.”  Here, Emerson is saying that, using the salmon analogy, it would be easier for the salmon to concede to the flow of water and forget its desired destination, or to find its own stream flowing the direction it wishes to journey, disregarding the existence of all other salmon.  To do either of these is to be common, for the common man is prone to give in or give up when life gets too tough.  Therefore, Emerson encourages us to do what we must/be who we are, without alienating ourselves form the world.  These ideas immediately bring to mind the fact that I am no to be “conformed to this world, but [to] be transformed… (Romans 12:2).”  A common way of stating this is to say that I am to be “in the world, but not of it.”  Since I live in the world, I am not to pretend that I am greater than anyone else, or deserve anything more than they, but I am to continue to seek to do what I must (love God and my neighbor), in the hopes of sharing Jesus’ love and truth with the world around me on the journey to “greatness.”
How can I apply the ideas of servitude, selflessness, and dependence to an essay about “Self-Reliance?”  Emerson himself said that “the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion.”  I have done nothing more than he has asked of me; read his words and applied them to my life, which I live based in the fact that “I believe in [Jesus] as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

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