My Ideal me

What constitutes the best me? That’s an excellent question and one I have never pondered. I can think of three things that I feel at least point towards the answer. I want to be the best father and family man that I can be. I want to be able to think for myself. I also want the freedom to express myself.

On the first, I wish to be the best father that I can be. I deeply desire to be with my family more than anything else in life. The mere thought of being apart from them is disheartening. This holds true especially if I must travel abroad without them. In Self Reliance, Emerson says “the wise man stays at home and when his necessities, his duties on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still.” This passage sums up how I feel about my own ideal family life. Home is where the heart is. If your heart is on your family then you are truly at home. That’s how I see myself.

As I posted in the class discussion I want to be able to think for myself. I do not need to be programmed to someone else’s protocol. I need to be allowed to make decisions for myself. Emerson describes it best when he wrote “Nothing is at last sacred but your own mind.” Emerson was discussing conformity. Conformists are not free thinkers. This leads to my third trait that I feel constitutes the best me.

My ideal self would be the absolute contradictory of conformist. Society would have us mold ourselves and forms of expression to whatever the current culturally accepted trend is. I thank God for blogs (or whatever force may have created blogs). Here is a real chance to express one’s self. I could care less if I have many or none who follow my blogs. The fact is that I wrote my feelings and expressed my point of view on a subject that may only be important to me.

An example of the kind of social/cultural acceptance that I am talking about is not being allowed to express myself in my profession. This is just not tolerated in the culture of my profession. I think that it is nonsense that I am told what I can and cannot say. Oh but I got clever. I learned alternative ways to express my view especially when they contradict the culturally excepted rules. Subtle Latin phrases posted on social networking sites, and crafty pictures hanging on the walls where I work that have a deeper meaning than what meets the eye. I already mentioned blogs. Emerson sums it all up in Self Reliance when he writes “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” Amen. Self reliance is self satisfaction and justice.

I never really sat and thought of the ideal me before. This assignment has made me realize a few things about myself. I see myself as a family first, freethinking non conformist. I would say that Emerson and Thoreau would be proud but then again I rely on myself and could care less what others think of me. That is how I see the best me.