Wellness Calendar: Wednesday 5 November

“Trust thyself”

“Trust thyself” is a quote from philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was part of an 1800s American movement called transcendentalism. They believed that people – just as animals, just as the whole of nature – are inherently good. The badness comes from the design of the society and all its corrupting elements that chip away at one’s morality and wholesomeness. Emerson prized people as individuals, each as governors of themselves. He had no time for authority or the state, with its attempt to make people conform to its wishes. Instead, in his essay Self-Reliance he urged people to follow their own calling, use their own instincts and carve their own paths, saying “life is a journey, not a destination.”
Do you trust yourself? Or do you need to be governed so that you don’t run amok?

[NB. If you are interested in this area, there are many similarities between Emerson’s idea of self-reliance and Carl Jung’s notion of individuation and the humanistic/person-centred concept of self-actualisation.]

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