Do You Let Yourself Have Good Ideas?

It's harder than it looks.

There is a line (well, two lines actually) in the opening of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” that I think of often:

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his.

I used to teach this essay to 18-year-olds for a couple of reasons. First, Emerson rules. Second, I wanted them to try to trust that they could have good ideas. That’s what I take from this passage: we tend to devalue our own ideas because they are ours and not in a textbook or syllabus or book already (Today I show how hip I am by including meme, political platform, ideological camp, and influencer. I am pretty sure Emerson would not be the world’s biggest defender of social media).

What idea do you remember having that was yours? Not parroting something else. Not something you learned or read or were told. Not applying some theory or philosophy or stance that was available to you. Usually when I asked this question, I didn’t get much response. Granted, they were freshmen and didn’t know a whole lot about anything, but I am 46-years old now, and I cannot say I had a ready list. Even the idea for this newsletter took me a couple of years to muster the courage to start. And I think it’s a really good idea, and if someone else had had it (maybe they have!) and made it first, I would have had two thoughts: damn, that’s a good idea and damn I wish I was writing it.

Emerson writes something akin to this:

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe our own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius.

Translation: I read this amazing poem the other day by a painter (how is that fair!?) and it pissed me off. How come this brush-monkey had the gumption to write what he believed, whereas I am a tremulous coward. This is pretty tricky of Emerson and not a little disingenuous, as no one in the history of English 101 courses liked to believe what he thought was true was true for everyone (“Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.” Gee, Ralph, which one would you say you are?).

This painting is called “Fruit on a Tray” by an unknown artist, who if they were as bad naming paintings as they were at painting probably would have called it “Fruit on a Tray” as well. Still, it was painted in the same year (at least that is what the nerds at The National Gallery are guessing) that Emerson wrote “Self-Reliance” (1841), and he would have said “good job you clearly did not let the fact that existing painters are already crushing the painting of fruit stop you from painting…this.”

Still, I don’t think he’s wrong. Or at least, the experience he describes is a familiar one to me, and I think a familiar one to others. We might have more modern terms for it now like “imposter syndrome” or “fake it til you make it” or “the Lacanian mirror stage,” but the core feeling remains the same: I don’t think my ideas can possibly be as useful as the ideas that are already out there, especially the ideas of people whose names are carved on libraries or on bylines or in prominent publicly funding podcasts.

And notice too that Emerson does not ascribe genius to the quality of the ideas. The bar is actually much lower and harder than that. It is the belief that your idea might be good enough or true enough to be worth expressing that is genius.

I take comfort in the fact that even canonized blowhards like Emerson got the intellectual yips every now and then. And so when I am procrastinating or questioning myself or just out-and-out worried that what I want to say or make or think might be garbage, I remember that I can call it genius to just send or post. And Emerson would agree with me.