To Thine Own Self Be True: Between the Selfish Heart and the Selfish Mind (A Self-Reliant Rant)

I am a self-actualized man.  Or boy, depending on the day.  And why is this so?  As all things with life, if one pays enough attention...I was forced into self-actualization by circumstance.

When I boarded the plane from Havana to Miami, October 1995...it took me an additional two years, on another plane, back to Cuba, from Miami...to realize the great irony that my life had just planted at my feet.  It was in that moment that I, unconsciously and consciously, understood what it was to say hello and goodbye in the very same breath.  It was then that I began to plant my feet firmly in the realm of self-reliance.  It took me, I'd say, fourteen more years to come to this point, and say, without a doubt...I still do not know who I am, but I know, always now, that I am the only one I need to survive in the world.  This is not a selfish quest we're on, but one that is incredibly harder to define (and gets harder and harder with each year, it seems).  My friends, my brothers, my family...they are all in me too, yes...and being together is a great pleasure and a great privilege.  One I take so seriously it even sometimes gets in the way of everything else.  But they can never bring me down, and nor can I ever impose my own life on them.  This is Emerson's plea...we must listen to our hearts first and foremost, because THAT is how we can listen to another's, that is how we can love.

I have been ready to say my goodbyes since the first hellos.  This is the way it’s always been for me, and I hazard a guess…the way it’ll always be for everyone else, whether they realize it or not.  The problem with connecting, with that desire to know another, to love another, is that it always passes, travels from person to person, emotion to emotion, and never settles into anything but the transient being it creates between two people, the invisible third hand or foot that allows you to keep the memories, allows you to remember how someone’s eyes looked when cast against dusk, how someone’s words hurt you too much to imagine, how you saw them last, or for the first time.  All we are left with, in the end, are the traces of the people we’ve left behind, the people that have left US behind.  Self-reliance, then, is an act of selflessness.  It’s a protection against one of life’s harshest inevitabilities…we all must end up alone in order to face ourselves.  Emerson says, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.”  That's precisely what we keep if we don't let ourselves be carried by our own regrets, by our own attempts at salvaging and recovering what does not want to be saved or recovered.  If time is cruel, we are crueler still to believe we can do anything to stop it, or to make it run any slower.

And what is this integrity of mind?  For me, it's keeping very clear that we must rule ourselves FIRST, and we must do what is RIGHT for us above everything else.  This is not meant to be a selfish decision, but one of self-preservation, as said before, because no matter how many people surround us today, they can do nothing in the acts of our lives except watch and spew wisdom, what little of it remains in the world to spew.  My best friend can no more rule my life than my best enemy...it's up to me, and no one else.  This is why Emerson so crucially points that it is in the saving of our mind's purity, of its individuality, of its First Thought, where we save our own lives.  Emerson continues his thought by stating, "What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think."  It's just another form of independence...and if we are to follow others, if we really are meant to not have Original Thinking in life...then we would not die as ourselves, but as everyone else.  We would perish more alone than if we were to face solitude in the face.  It must, MUST be true then, that the only choice available to us is that of keeping our paths separate from another's, even when we walk it together, even when we share common ends, or beginnings.  Man is an island, even when no man is an island.  After all, "the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

Not quite the perfect setup, but one of Emerson's most important points for me, and one of the most controversial I reckon, is his idea that "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," a statement which I happen to agree with.  We couldn't possibly hold ourselves to consistency...and how could we, living in a world full of contradictions, and paradox, and unknowns?  To live correctly, one must only look to the Self, and ask: Am I following you right?  Here in America especially it's considered a sign of fantastic character if one is reliable, punctual, and, to be blunt about it...a little dull.  The excitement of spontaneity, of not knowing what one wants at all hours of the day...all of that is looked down upon, ESPECIALLY in the world of our work, the most essential to our survival.  One could argue (and rationalize) this is so in order to avoid misunderstandings, to avoid problems of conflicting ideas and personalities...to keep, as Kanye West says, our love locked down.  Such a shame, then, to give up one's rights to never be pinned down to a personality trait, or a characteristic of mind, or a stereotype...a true shame, that the greatest work we will ever undertake, the work of Identity, is always the one most undermined by the Society in which it's meant to survive.

Let's not misunderstand, either!  Emerson isn't saying it's okay to be a flake, or to be unreliable, to live, as it were, on the whims of a day...no, he's merely saying that we cannot tie ourselves down to who we think we are, because, in the long run of our existence, who we think we are is an ever-changing cycle of emotions, wants, irrationalities...namely, everything that makes up the map of the world is also in us, and with that in mind: how can we possibly ask for anything even resembling continuity or absolutes?  Even more to Emerson's point, is that there's an inherent sadness, an inherent impossibility, in what he is asking his readers to do.  As he points out, "Discontent is the want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will."  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our lives, as they are.  I'm not entirely sure, though, that Emerson was unaware of the Catch-22 being presented...in fact, I think that's precisely more the reason to bring it up, to introduce it to the world...because THAT is how we grow and how we deal with not only self-reliance, and how to attain it, but also how to release people from our grips, how to release ourselves from theirs...how to stand alone, and know it not as a punishment, but as a right, and as a a gift.

That's all for now, folks, but let me leave you with this:

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men...that is genius."

Thanks for reading, and see you all next week.

I apologize beforehand for the spoilers within the clip, but I cannot imagine a more fitting tribute to self-actualization (AND the bittersweetness of it) than this glorious grace note from Harold and Maude.  Enjoy, and remember...

To Let Go