April 2014 Blog - My Tracks in the Snow Led to Emerson
by Susan Myhre Hayes on 04/16/14
April 2014 Blog - My Tracks in the Snow Led to Emerson
When I talk to people about my book, Peace in the Puzzle: Becoming Your Intended Self, they often ask where to start as they begin their own transformation. I believe that throughout our lives, the universe helps us on our way to become our intended selves; however, many of us miss the cues. I know I did. So, I suggest looking at your tracks in the snow, asking questions like, what did I like to do when I was younger, which job did I enjoy the most, what were my favorite classes.
Recently, I took my own advice, and looked at my college classes trying to remember if there were ideas that caught my imagination back then. As a double major in English and German literature, I began to think of authors and rediscovered Ralph Waldo Emerson, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. Emerson believed in people's ability to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and a higher philosophical force he called nature.
I had not read Emerson for 30 years, and yet, his ideas resonate throughout my book, as well as how I live my life. I had to smile when I found this Emerson quotation, "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me."
And, so without my conscious knowledge, Emerson's ideas percolated in me, eventually ending up allowing me to transform into my intended self, the person the universe wants me to be. And, so Emerson's words made me.
In the hopes that it will also help lead you to your intended self, I give you three powerful Emerson quotations:
- "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."
- "The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be."
- "Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen."
When you look at your tracks in the snow, what books, ideas, authors, teachers have made you?
