There Is Nothing Outside Your Self
11 Oct 2018Ne te quaesiveris extra.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
- John Fletcher, An Honest Man’s Fortune
I’ve always been drawn to the opening quote of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance, which translated to English means: Do not seek outside yourself.
And now I think I know why: becuase, in fact, this is quite literally how things work. We can’t seek outside ourselves for anything because the only way we can interact with the world is through our (subjective) selves. In this way, there is nothing that we can do “outside” of our selves.
To be clear, I’m not saying that we can affect reality and change the world for the better. To the contrary, I believe we are the biological organisms most well equipped to understand and change/ update the objective environment.
However, to do this most effectively, we must realize that it is impossible to do so without passing through your subjective lens, which by definition is non-objective and specific to the peculiarities of your neurobiology/ neurochemistry. What we need to do then is get highly in tune with our subjectivities (the self-talk, the self-doubt, the emotions, etc.), our specific peculiarities, in order to control for and adjust them.
In addition, I think another obvious implication of this is, similar to how the old adage goes: if you want anything done, you’ve go to do it through your self. Especially if what you want done relates directly to your own life. Though, again, even if it doesn’t relate directly, everything relates to your life indirectly since you’re experiencing everything through your self.
Bottom line: Things don’t happen to you. You act, as subject, and the objective world changes. If the changes you see in the objective world are not to your liking, or in accordance with your goals, then you have to change how you, as a subject, act. In this sense (and I think in a very real sense), everything is a (direct or indirect) result of your actions.
Now, of course, I’m not saying that there aren’t things outside of your control. To argue that in our very complicated modern world would be absurd. But I’d push back on anyone who argues that it’s difficult to make change in the world. Making change, especially on ambitious goals, is difficult but it’s not obviously clear how difficult.
It’s been said that we overestimate progress in the short-term, but underestimate it in the long term, and I think this may be right. Making change then could be much easier than anticipated, with the right mindset. The never quit, keep grinding mindset. It might be surprising how much reality conforms to your actions/ goals, when you start trying to change it. It might be that people underestimate how much is possible simply b/c they frame things as being done to them rather than results, direct or indirect, of their actions.
Now, I’m not saying that anyone can change anything in the objective world over any given time period. Again, things are difficult, especially for problems that are known to be so. But by focusing on the pieces of reality that are and are not under your control, and which ones (from a time management perspective) give the best cost-benefit, breaks big problems into small bits that can be directly in your sphere of influence.
In the end, you as a subject must make these determinations and, upon making them, adjust your actions to invoke positive change.