“Write
it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I focused on Emerson in
yesterday’s “Saturday’s Poem” feature, it seemed that there was so much more to
share. Eminently quotable, Emerson was
the first American to advocate for Americans to develop a writing style of
their own; to create “American” writing and not just copy that of their
forebears from other parts of the world.
He was born on May 25, 1803, on the
day of the commissioning of Lewis and Clark's great expedition into the
Louisiana Purchase. Thus, as the Corps
of Discovery was created to open American frontiers, this great writer and
thinker was born to a similar pathway – only toward discovery of the written
word.
Emerson was one of the first writers
to keep journals, influencing his great friend Henry David Thoreau to do the
same. Emerson’s lifelong extensive
journals and notes ultimately were published in 16 volumes by Harvard
University Press and are considered to be his key literary works – even though
that was not his intent. “I just wanted
to maintain a record of the things that were important to my life,” he wrote. As it turned out, they are things that have
influenced generations of writers both in their content and the practice of
journaling itself.
He was a staunch supporter of
education for girls and women and helped found a Massachusetts school for
girls. And, from the mid-1840s on, he
was a national leader of the abolitionist movement. Known for his kindness and support of others,
he said simply, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon
it will be too late.”
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