Thursday 25 October 2012

I found the following from Ralph Waldo Emmerson quite fascinating: "The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression." It fascinates me because of its simple and yet profound truth. I suspect that if one wants peace and to be left all alone, all one has to do is be half a man. When dictators break the law of the land killing and maiming, looting and plundering and you want to survive, all you have to do is not give expression to your feelings.

We know that this is not true otherwise there would not be approximately 30 000 dead in Syria today and hundreds of thousands of others in all the conflicts, manufactured or genuine, all around the world.

When you give expression as a human being, you almost immediately put yourself in the firing line which could take the form of dismissal from work because you blew the whistle, assassination because you revealed an act of corruption, being ostracised because you dared speak your mind or being criticised by a literary critic or rival philosopher because you espoused a novel idea or thought.

What to do?

Well consider those who die without ever having given expression to their selves. Imagine the folk who refuse to participate in a rebellion against dictatorship and end up dying from an indiscriminate bombing campaign anyway? What about staff who are retrenched because they did not stand up to the CEO's shenanigans when this could have prevented a company collapse? There are countless examples of people who refuse to go to the front but are the first to have their nicely tended houses taken over for the comfort of occupying army officers.

What is to live?

It is to give expression to self through music, art, writing, protest or the mere hoisting of a flag. It is to bellow  the war cry even when the battle might soon be lost. It is William Wallace shouting a defiant freedom, just before being put to death.

When you give expression to self, your life becomes one that has been fully lived and probably helped to advance mankind, even for an inch. Go on, express yourself. You might just change the world for the better.