For the last month or so i had been struggling to weave my words and thoughts into a strong knit to cover my ego ... but every time I took to it, it somehow never allowed me my right to expression ... but then today something happened ... I found exactly what I was looking for, but in the remotest corners of the literature I possess... even though I know nothing of this author, I couldn't help but relate to his amazing frankness.... I hope this is more or less what i would have done to this topic.....
We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these circumstances -- have our own thoughts to cheer us?
Confucius says truly, “Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbours.”
With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind, we can stand aloof from the actions and their consequences; and all things, good or bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature in nature, I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself because as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections: and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience , I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me , but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than that is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbours and good friends sometimes.
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the company that was so companionable as solitude. A man thinking or working is always alone; let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the overcrowded hives of Cambridge College, is as a solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks,” and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for the day’s solitude.
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We have had to agree on a certain set rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.
I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey an idea of my situation. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appears to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone – but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or a sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely that the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the North Star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.
The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature – of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter – such health, such cheer they afford forever! And such sympathy they ever with our race, that Nature would be affected: What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contended? Not my or thy grandfather’s , but our great-grandmother Nature’s universal , vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always , outlived so many old Parrs in her day. For my panacea, instead of one of those quick vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it I the shops!
This is not an original creation. It has been taken from a RC exercise Test Booklet (T.I.M.E).
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