“What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what other people think.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ones own thoughts are hard to understand, normally our own thoughts are crowded and mixed up by others. Other people in our life influence us in many ways, especially in our thinking. Your thought is manipulated daily, through school, the media, people around us change how we think. Yes, it is important to understand everyone else but it is pointless to understand everyone else when one does not understand themselves.
If one understands the thoughts of others it is pointless if they do not realize what they gain. They must gain something or else there thoughts are wasted. The ability gained is the ability to separate others thought's to ones own thoughts. Once you have the ability one is able to see clearly the difference between what one believes and what others believe.
For one to be in touch with themselves they must first ignore society and see whats inside. No one is able to get in touch with there inner self if they are worrying about what other people are thinking about. It is necessary to exclude what others think about you, those thoughts are irrelevant to your persona. What others think should not have an affect on our life, we should be able to live our own life based on our thought and that alone. Our life is based only on what we think it is, only our thoughts and actions affect our lives. Once we are able to realize that we control our life and that no one else can affect it, then we have control over it.
About Me
- Jose Torres Torija
- I'm a very open minded person, who likes to help others with their situations in life
3 comments:
"Yes, it is important to understand everyone else but it is pointless to understand everyone else when one does not understand themselves."
I like the way you phrased this - the idea that as important as it is to understand people you should seek to understand people, perhaps, relative to yourself. I think at a certain level the other people DO have a point, but you should make that at least less important than what you think.
Jose, I liked what you had to say about Emerson's Self-Reliance essay. It was a different perspective on it and I enjoyed seeing it from someone else's point of view. You brought up some interesting points in what you said, especially near the end. I liked when you said "For one to be in touch with themselves they must first ignore society and see whats inside." This is a viewpoint that many of us try to live up to, but I feel like in our society now days it it very difficult to do this in any way because society has so much impact on our lives. Even though we may think that we don't care about what other people think or how our actions affect the way other people percieve us, we all on a subconscious level yearn for the approval of our peers. This leads to, for many people, actions that may not entirely reflect who we are on the inside. Emerson's ideas are very idealistic and utopian at times, and this is a great example of that.
Jose
"The ability gained is the ability to separate others thought's to ones own thoughts."
This is so true. I had never thought of it this way. Generally we are told that we can't let anyone else change our thoughts and we shouldn't let other people's thoughts enter the boundaries of our own mind. However in order for us to really understand who we are we have to know other people's thoughts. You can characterize what you believe by what you disagree with in other people's minds. I had never thought of it that way but it is very true, how can we understand what we know if we never experience what else is out there for us to believe.
Good Job!
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