Nature

I sat down in my backyard next to a tree. It was around 3 o'clock and pretty chilly and gloomy out. Right away I noticed you could hear everything. The breaking of branches, the talking of your neighbors, the airplanes overhead. I must've heard 4 or 5 airplanes pass over my house but I couldn't see them because of how cloudy it was. I heard the wind the clearest though. When it was silent, I would hear the wind rustling through the treees. The wind made branches move and leaves were falling every so often nearby me. The neighbors cat came over to me on the ground and purred around my legs for about 5 minutes then dashed off toward a plant behind me for whatever reason cats like to dash. It was cool just sitting outside listening to everything. My body was at peace with nature. I had no distractions and no worries. It was like I was listening to Bob Marley. It was peaceful and cool outside. There was no screaming of voices and honking of cars. Just the wind and leaves blowing away and the jingling of the cats coller. The grass was cold that I was sitting on probably because it was wet from the sprinklers. I saw the plants on the other side of the chain fence moving because some bird or squirrel was crawling around in it. It was a little eerie how well you noticed things. I heard every sound there was to hear: branches crackling, chimes from the chime thing outide my parents room, the neighbors talking outside, a bird chirping on the tree across from me, it was pretty intense. I felt like I was in Into the Wild, except not as gnarly as that kid.

Friendship

I woke up and me and my friend went to grab some breakfast at Bruegger's Bagels. He paid for me and I said thank you and we ate breakfast at a table not saying much because we were pretty tired and it was good to just sit there and eat quietly. We walked back to his house talking about bands who had singers with insanely good voices like the Fray. I told him we should take voice lessons and he said he wanted to also. We got to his house and he started playing guitar and I just sat there and listened and it was pretty cool just to hear him jam and make up stuff as he played. He finished playing and we started talking about chicks and how guitar and having an Australian accent are total chick magnets. It was pretty easy being truthful like Emersonian because for some reason I just happened to agree with what he said and played. I didn't have to tell him I was bothered by his guitar playing because I wasn't and I liked talking about accents and singing voices. I left his house a little after that and my mom picked me up and she asked me some questions about formal and I answered truthfully saying that I had fun, and I saw lots of my friends there, and that the place looked pretty tight. There were no questions that i even considered thinking about lying so that was easy to be Emerson-like. I got home and got a little mad at my brother because he was sitting around watching t.v and he had lots of homework and we had plans for later that night so I told him to go do his homework and he replied kindly, "shut up." What a sweet kid. Anyway I started doing my homework and then later took a shower. Around 5, I went to my friends house and we celebrated his birthday that had passed a couple days before. I got him a wooden baseball bat which was pretty Emerson-like because I love baseball and so does he so I was giving him part of me and I knew he would appreciate it. He loved the gift and said thanks and received some other cool gifts like video games and t-shirts and appreciated all the gifts he got. Being an Emersonian friend wasn't that hard but I'm sure it would be much harder if you did it everyday. You would definetly get some funny looks and people would probably be confused why you were acting so weird.

Gifts

Gifts should be given without any expectation that you will be recieving something in return. Emerson states that you should give a gift that relates somehow to yourself. The gift you give should represent some part of yourself and should be meaningful to you somehow. If you just give the person what they want then there is no meaning and they are just getting what they expect or want. There is no excitment in getting a gift you already know is coming. Receiving something that is least expected and shows a characteristic about the giver of the gift then that gift is much more meaningful than say something you wanted originally. Emerson says you should receive gifts with no emotion of happiness or sadness because that shows that you cared more about the gift than they person giving the gift. You should receive gifts with an appreciation that someone is giving you something and shouldn't care about the actual gift as much as the person giving you the gift. If I lived my life as an Emersonian gift-giver I feel as though people would be think I'm kind of strange. People in society today expect certain gifts given to them and don't care as much about the person giving the gift. If I gave someone who cared nothing about baseball two tickets to a Padres Game they probably would stare at me blankely and be thorougly confused. People don't care about gifts that you like, they care about gifts that they like. I gave to my grandparents when I was 7 or 8 a big book of poems me and my brother had written for them for Christmas. They loved it because it was meaningful and we had worked hard on writing these poems for them. I feel it would be difficult and somewhat life changing to live your life as an Emersonian gift-giver/receiver.

Self-Reliance

"We but half express ourselves and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents"

We go through our everyday lives, speaking a bunch of stuff that we don't really believe but society expects us to follow. We are too afraid of society to admit to our own ideas and views. If people have a completely different view of something than we do, then we feel like we've done something horrible to have a different opinion than they do. What we each think and feel is divine in a sense. That means that our true beliefs are what is actually real. If we are to afraid to express our own feelings, then this world is in for lots of trouble because no one will come up with any solutions or new ideas because they'll all be afraid to do so. Everyone will be scared to come out of their shells. What society says is usually what society wants to hear. The individual who speaks truly what he feels, is hated by society, but shall have good karma for expressing his own beliefs. He shows more courage than all the rest of the people who just follow society like cattle. "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he wo in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." Each person in the is world has a little different opinion about something than someone else does. No two people are going to share the exact same views on something because that wouldn't be the truth. We each have our own thoughts and minds and conjure up our own ideas. To agree with someone in a sense when you don't actually agree with that person, makes you pathetic. And what is more pathetic is that you know your following the person and know that those actually aren't your beliefs. Guts are something that take part in being able to put yourself out there. Not a lot of people are able to do that because their afraid of what the consequences might be. In truth, some of the time, your own ideas that you put out there, are in fact the same ones that others mights have but are to afraid to say themselves. You are being a leader in putting out your own thoughts or views or at least admitting when you disagree with something. Our own thoughts are pure and real and following the norm is disgracing yourself.