“Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
This is one of the first quotes that I fell in love with, though our beginnings were not so positive.
As is usually the case, the details of my memories surrounding my early encounter with this quote are hazy. I remember my parents had a small wooden placard of some kind with an engraved, painted or burned image (perhaps of a sunset, beach, birds or some combination) accompanying this quote in a beautifully difficult to read script. It was always prominently displayed in their home, not where guests would see it, but where us children would come face to face with it on a regular basis. In fact, I seem to remember it being deliberately mounted directly at my eye level.
Children, despite regular exposure to wisdom, rarely catch on the way adults wish they would, and the mere act of mounting these words in my face did little to transfer the idea to my behavior. In fact, I began to develop a dependency on my eloquence and creativity (read: lies) as a means of damage control in the department of my character. Dealing a great blow of justice, the universe has ensured that my son struggles as much as I did, if not more, with this concept of actions and character being louder than words. I have been unable to convince him that, no matter what he says, his actions and character ultimately dictate the way people interact with him. My father, knowing me as well as he did (and as well as I know my own son), was forced to take action.
This is where the details get fuzzy. It seems that, all at once, my father challenged me to memorize the quote, he had a heartfelt talk with me about the quote, and he had a somewhat heated discussion with me concerning this quote. The fact of the matter is, we had several heated discussions around the time in question, but I do remember very distinctly that we had a sincere discussion at his request about this quote, and I remember him challenging me to memorize the quote (an idea I may be borrowing from shortly for my own son). The order in which these events took place, as well as the period of time separating them, will forever be lost to the little monster in my head that gobbles up memories.
What I do remember is that I became obsessed with the name “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” and I inquired about him. I remember that my parents’ responses to my inquiries were not detailed, but they managed to satisfy me until adulthood (at which point Wikipedia picked up where my parents left off). Also, the end result of my father force-feeding me this quote is that I gained a deep appreciation for wisdom and quotes that contain it, and a seed was planted – the seed of philosophy.
In my more recent years I have begun to toy with the idea of getting into philosophy, perhaps as a course of study and even a career. You see, philosophy comes from the Greek philosophia, which literally means “love of wisdom.” I love wisdom, and my mechanical brain is well suited to the systematic approaches used in philosophy to study the fundamental questions of life.
Being that I am a religious man, I know that there are many well-intentioned individuals who may read this and feel a desire to caution me. I hear your cautions, but urge you to rest assured that I already practice a fair amount of philosophy in every discipline of life, religious and otherwise. I am firm in my faith, but I do not let my faith close my mind on any subject. My faith is steady, but my mind is always expanding, always exploring, both inside and outside the gospel. Philosophy would be something that I could give my brain to do, as a hobby, that could yield some very interesting results.
I am currently learning what I can about philosophy without taking any major courses, and if it continues to strike my fancy, I may take college classes on the subject to continue my investigation. Who knows? I could become the Ralph Waldo Emerson of my generation, though I would have to learn to be much more concise with my words if I am ever going to hold an audience and influence the world in the way that he did.
