Self Reliance

"Self Reliance" is an essay that urges its readers to trust their own intuition and common sense rather than following popular belief and conforming to the general public. Ralph Waldo Emerson encourages us to look within the individual for answers and not in prayer. "Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous." Emerson sees prayer as selfish, it is based on what it can get us. "Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious." If we do pray it should be for the greater good of all, not for personal accomplishment or sensation. Emerson argues that man will not ask for prayer when he is one with God. Man will see prayer in all his actions.

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Unhappiness is the want of self-reliance. If one cannot help the sufferer, attend your own duties, and this will initiate the healing process. Our sympathy is just as base. We aid to those who weep irrationally, sit down and cry for company, instead of communicating to them the truth of the matter. We must put them in communication with their own reason. To sit there and caress them will obstruct the sufferer's view of self-reliance. We must allow them to follow their own intuition and conscience. In allowing them to do this we will preserve the principle of self-trust and responsibility.

Emerson's point is that we must uphold the principle and practice of self-reliance. All must be responsible for their obligations and trust themselves. Individuals have not only a right but also a responsibility to think for themselves, and that neither societal disapproval nor concerns about acceptance should discourage this.