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Emerson wrote this essay to inspire people to make a theological, characteristic, and emotional change in their everyday lifestyle that would be genuine and not that of a neighbor. Emerson led by example by leaving the fast pace Boston and moving to rural Concord where he built a small cabin by Walden pond where he lived in solitude searching for his own answers to his own questions in solitude. This later inspired his prodigy Henry David Thoreau to do the same and write a book called Walden.

There are still nonconformist today who go against the outline that society has told us we must follow. Emerson wasn’t the only person that went against the grain to find his own unique individual purpose in life; in fact, today we have people like Mark Zuckerburg, ect. Coming up with their own unique ideas and spreading it across the nation. People notice genuine action. They don’t notice it because it rare because in reality it happens everyday. They don’t notice it because it is big and shinny. They notice it because genuine action comes from the heart. When Martin Luther King made his “I have a Dream” speech people noticed his genuine passion; that he knew deep inside his heart that there needed to be equality for everyone. When a surfer wakes up before the sun has even begun to peek out over the waves and paddles out every morning in search of the perfect wave people notice his dedication because it is genuine. When a mother tucks her child in to bed and whispers the words “I love you” to her baby girl; there is nothing more powerful because it comes from the deepest most sincere part of her heart.

Emerson observed the way people lived while in Boston. He observed nature in solitude and found his true purpose in life as well as the 3 fundamental ideas of Transcendentalism and his essay “Self Reliance” of nonconformity, individuality, and genuine action. Emerson was not the only individual in history that followed his intution and didn’t confom society. The great minds like Shakespeare, Dickenson, Ghandi, ect. all followed their own path and in the end everyone else followed them. Emerson followed his intuition and became a unique and genuine individual. After observing society he developed his own opinion and thoughts on life and believed what was true to his heart was to true for the rest of society as well. Whether his beliefs were true or not is not important; what matters is that he followed his own heart and didn’t conform to the preconceived