Self-Reliance Response

What do you care? Well in today’s society many people are worried about what others think about them. Everyone wonders, will they fit in, or will they be rejected? How do you control that? Isn’t it normal to care how others perceive you or is it a sign of self doubt and self esteem issues? Many young people all around the world hear someone tell them this statement or someone else, “there is no such thing as a stupid question”. The author of Essay II Self-Reliance seems to be telling us that we don’t need to go through all of this stress through pathos. We as people don’t need to prove ourselves anyone.
The use of pathos in the essay establishes a connection of emotions between the author and the audience. The author states that if he were to ever come down to them having to change for someone else they would not do it. The author’s goal is to get people to realize their importance and that they don’t need to change for someone else. Everyone changes in their own due time, “for the inmost due time becomes the outmost” (Emerson 1). But then they admit that they now contradict themselves and admits “there is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be…though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold” (Emerson 4). But even before the author establishes this deep connection of admitting to something they were previously completely arguing against they said that they felt a great shame about it. This would make the audience feel for the author. Who clearly struggled with this and just as the author said earlier in the text many people think the same way.
Everyone hears the same quote from their teacher at some point in their life “there is no such thing as a stupid question,” or something of that sort. Well the author of Essay II Self-Reliance also believes this is true. “Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take shame our own opinion from another” (Emerson 2). This is the example of the author saying that it’s okay to be yourself and say what you think is right because there is probably someone else out there thinking the same thing that you are thinking so go ahead say it. It’s up to us to make a change! “We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents” (Emerson 2). We are so worried about what other people may think of us that we don’t do what we think is right and would be helpful. “As soon as he has once acted or spoken with éclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account” (Emerson 3). People fear to show their true side because of their past and they may feel that people will only remember them and judge them by the situation. The author later states “it is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion”.
We will continue to hear the wise words of people who believe it is time for a change with the thoughts of today’s society, who is afraid to be whom, they are because of fear. Remember there is no such thing as a stupid question, be who you are because your are the only person who truly knows who that is. And if that’s hard or understandable “gon head n’ brush yo shoulda’ off!” (Jay-Z). Get rid of the those “haters”.