Emerson essay

This is a picture of my sister and I when we travelled with our grandparents to London.

I interviewed my sister, Lauren Castro who is a ward clerk at a Kaiser Permanente hospital. She didn't need a bachelor or anything. All she needed was a CPR license and training, but she’s still in school. This is her first real job. She’s 24, and she’s still deciding what she wants to spend the rest of her career doing. I really like helping people get better. For example, I always try to help my grandparents. I know for a fact I want to work in the medical field as well, but not exactly what she is doing. I want to either be a Physical Therapist or a Peds Nurse. I think it is a good assignment to do. Your kids can learn so much out of this and there are going to be a lot of kids who are unsure of what they want to do / study. So this is a good opportunity for kids to see more career ideas.

She chose to be a ward clerk to be in the medical field and learn but originally she worked in the call center and answered a bunch of questions for people who need assistance. She’s only 24 so she’s still deciding what she wants to spend the rest of her career doing. All she needed for this job was her CPR license and training. She said it was fun to learn. She likes the work because it keeps her busy but I’m sure she loves the money too. She’s helping the people who save lives. For example if someone is having a heart attack, the nurse or doctor run in the room and my sister is the one who puts all of the patient information into the charts, she also discharges patients. For her, she feels like she does no damage because she’s helping people get better, and she's making it easier for there doctors. Though she can't do anything she wants, she is doing what the nurses tell her but they are very kind towards her. She likes where she is now, but she wishes that she stayed in school and got her bachelor. She really doesn’t know what she wants to be yet but she knows it’s in the medical field.

Merton Essay:

“The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities. It fills the woods with an immense and confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with inconsistent and controlled rhythms.” - I absolutely love this little paragraph. I feel like everyday that it rained during my junior year, everyone was in a sad mood and said that rain is depressing. They said they hate it, but rain is honestly such a blessing and the sound of rain is so beautiful. I love listening to the rain. I usually open my window and watch the water fall from the sky. Rain and nature in general is a good way to let go of some anxiety and just listen to the beautiful sounds around us.
“I am also going to sleep, because here in this wilderness I have learned how to sleep again. Here I am not alien. The trees I know, the night I know, the rain I know. I close my eyes and instantly sink into the whole rainy world of which I am a part, and the world goes on with me in it, for I am not alien to it. I am alien to the noises of cities, of people, to the greed of machinery that does not sleep, the hum of power that eats up the night.” - Here, Merton is pointing out the fact that he falls asleep so easily in the wilderness because he has no worries in life. He is so at peace during night time, because he doesn’t have to listen to the noises of cities or people. He is truly one with nature. When I read this, I think of me not being able to fall asleep at night because I hear cars driving and etc. I wanna be like Merton and fall asleep in nature and not hear the noises of the city.
“Now if we take our vulnerable shell to be our true identity, if we think our mask is our true face, we will protect it with fabrications even at the cost of violating our own truth. This seems to be the collective endeavor of society: the more busily men dedicate themselves to it, the more certainly it becomes a collective illusion, until in the end we have the enormous, obsessive, uncontrollable dynamic of fabrications designed to protect mere fictitious identities.” - Many of us are constantly trying to hide something from others about ourselves. We put on a “mask” to help hide our insecurities because everyone is afraid of judgement. Here, Merton talks about society and how we embrace fictitious identities. Merton explains that we are so focused on protecting these fictitious identities we have that we’re willing to let our “masks” control us. The reason we let it control us is because we value too much on what others think of you. It’s the fear of judgement that keeps us from displaying our true identity to even our closest friends and family.
“It is in the desert of loneliness and emptiness that the fear of death and the need for self-affirmation are seen to be illusory. When this is faced, then anguish is not necessarily overcome, but it can be accepted and understood. Thus, in the heart of anguish are found the gifts of peace and understanding: not simply in personal illumination and liberation, but by commitment and empathy, for the contemplative must assume the universal anguish and the inescapable condition of mortal man.” - Human beings are very social creatures. Being alone has very negative effects on the body and on the mind. Being alone and losing hope, starts to change the mind's view on life. Being alone is the only thing that can change survival instinct. Merton tries to explain that when things aren’t going our way and we start to lose hope, and life doesn't have the same value as it did before. We start to question if life is even worth living anymore. Living alone isn't living at all.
“his world now shakes mightily with the stampede of his metamorphosed fellow citizens, and he soon becomes aware that the very stampede itself is the most telling and tragic of all arguments. For when he considers going out into the street "to try to convince them," he realizes that he "would have to learn their language." He looks in the mirror and sees that he no longer resembles anyone . He searches madly for a photograph of people as they were before the big change. But now humanity itself has become incredible, as well as hideous. To be the last man in the rhinoceros herd is, in fact, to be a monster.” - Here, Merton uses a rhinoceros as a metaphor for people who are hard headed. Basically, it represents how these stubborn people go for something without thinking about their actions.
"Thus the solitary cannot survive unless he is capable of loving everyone, without concern for the fact that he is likely to be regarded by all of them as a traitor. Only the man who has fully attained his own spiritual identity can live without the need to kill, and without the need of a doctrine that permits him to do so with a good conscience." - Merton continues to address the significance of being on your own without interaction. In this quote, Merton seems to describe how society views people who are maybe on the quieter side. Merton states that we may see these peoples as traitors. Society seems to think that because you may be alone, you don't seem to appreciate the people around you.

While reading this essay by Thomas Merton, I understood why people love Merton and consider this essay a masterpiece. It’s crazy how a few wise words can change your point of view on life. I liked reading this because it made me think a lot. In order to be happy, we have to buy things and do stuff.

The main point of his essay is that people appear to wear a mask which is ultimately how they appear to see their true identity. This can lead to illusions which make the “mask.” Then, people with false identities make others think that in order to be happy and content, they need to be consumers. This can ultimately lead to more needs which would result in their loss of hope.

Merton definitely changed my views because I realized that the less I need, the more content I will be. He says that it’s okay to be alone instead of following the typical norms that society has. In order to reach true happiness, we should live with less wants. We should get rid of our masks and accept the truth so we can understand it

EMERSON -Divinity School Address

“What am I? and What is? asks the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be quenched. Behold these outrunning laws, which our imperfect apprehension can see tend this way and that, but not come full circle.”- Emerson shows us that these are the precise kinds of questions that are sparked in every individual's mind when we face nature’s beauty. As well as the awe it produces in us.
“The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish.”- Emerson says that the viewpoint of virtue is highly respected and delighted in the presence of divine law. It’s funny because he brings up the idea of “homely game of life we play” while we’re not allowed to go to school right now. Haha.
“To man the sublime creed, that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind; and that one mind is everywhere active, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool; and whatever opposes that will, is everywhere balked and baffled, because things are made so, and not otherwise.” - Emerson explains that us humans believe that the world was built by the ideologies of a human. Who created those ideologies? Who made us in his own image? Emerson believes that everything that we have today was made by an ultimate reality.
“Whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition.”- Emerson is arguing that Spring is what we call spirituality. Emerson argues that spirituality can’t be taken on faith. He says that it isn't absorbed on the outside, but it’s a true sentiment on the inside.
“A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that, to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness.”- He observes that springs a question that is way more profound. The virtuous disposition is in the heart. Emerson talks about a deep moral. And then He later turns to truth as the ultimate moral beauty.
“Speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.” -Emerson is a known advocate for always speaking the truth. While we are always told to speak the truth, Emerson explains why being truthful has a much more powerful meaning. He believes that nature can sense our truthful acts and can benefit us later in life.
“There are persons who are not actors, not speakers, but influences; persons too great for fame, for display; who disdain eloquence; to whom all we call art and artist, seems too nearly allied to show and by-ends, to the exaggeration of the finite and selfish, and loss of the universal.” - Many of us look to people of fame to follow and take advice from. While there’s nothing wrong with this, there are some individuals with a prominent amount of wisdom that to Emerson, are “too great for fame.” What Emerson is trying to explain here is that unexpected wisdom comes from unexpected people.
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there.”- Emerson sees the greatness in man. He saw how God incarnates Himself in man.
“Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity.”- Evil is evil because it is unnatural. We as humans are born to do good positive acts. Humans always know what the right thing to do is in a situation because it comes natural to us. Therefore, when we do something evil, we know it’s wrong and is seen as unnatural. Emerson compares evil to cold or “the privation of heat.” Privation is the absence of something essential to a human's well being. Basically, Emerson is saying that goodness is like heat, meaning that it’s essential for the health of a human. Cold is relatively unnecessary to humans, which Emerson compares to evil.
“A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step so downward, is a step upward.”- Emerson says that every time you take a step back in life, we should look at our life from afar. The more I tune we’re getting with ourselves.

At the beginning of the address, he introduces the unity of God, man, and nature. He stresses that a true sense of religion, indeed the very soundness of the individual and of society, are impossible to achieve unless a man realizes his direct access to God and recognizes that religion and virtue are within, not understood from without. Man has no need for "mediator or veil" between himself and God.

Emerson emphasizes that a direct connection with God is available and exemplified in each and every person. This belief guides his discussion of the nature and importance of Jesus, who he regards as the highest demonstration of the expression of the divine spirit through the life and actions of a man. Jesus serves as a model and a source of inspiration for other men, but he did not achieve anything beyond the capabilities of humankind. The church has held Jesus up as different from and superior to other men, and has focused excessively on "the person of Jesus" … on the particular qualities that distinguish Jesus from other men, instead of his similarity to the rest of mankind.