Post 4

In order to have an experience with nature, you have to cut yourself off from all communication with society and the public. You have to be completely alone with no way of getting in touch with anyone and more importantly, with no one having a way to get ahold of you. No cell phone, no ipod, no computer, no people. All there can be is you and your thoughts and nature around you. You have to completely surrender yourself to the Earth and trust that it will not hurt you and you have to trust that it can support you. You also have to give the nature enough time to have an effect on you. At least around 30 minutes is about enough time to have an experience. This experience really allows you to connect yourself with nature, but in order to gain something from the experience you have to open to gaining something from this nature experience. You have to trust that nature can support you in the barest sense. We have to know that even if we lose everything, our familes, friends, homes, cars, pets, everything even if we lost everything, we would still have nature it would be there as a home for you if you needed one. It is the only thing that can support you when everythign else has failed you. This experience of being alone with nature really made me realize that. I saw that the even when the sand and the ocean were all i had, i wasn't panicked. I could trust nature if i ever needed to. Nature is so pure, and so serene that it can calm you down from any state of mind the rest of hte world has put you in. People and society and expectations and stress can put you in bad moods, and they can ruin your state of mind, but nature is the one thing that can always return your sanity and your mind back to you. No matter how pressure your mind gets put on it, a time in nature is the world's psychiatrist. A peaceful time with nature can cure anything that the world can throw at you, it restores your mind and revives your heart. Being alone with the ocean with no way of anyone contacting me and interrupting my peace was really liberating, it makes you feel in control of your own mind again and it frees your thoughts from the boundaries that society has put them in.
"He who knows the most, he who knows what sweetss and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and loyal man."
"These enchantments are medicinal; they sober and heal us."

Post 3

Living as an Emersonian friend meant that we had to be honest with our friends. We weren't allowed to use common conversation as enough to satisfy our friendships for the day. We weren't supposed to use compliments or gossip or common conversation with our friends, instead we had to use honesty, and only honesty. We were supposed to be sincere with our friends no matter what, and this was hard! When i saw my friends during the day, I wasn't even allowed to wave or say hi because that would be considered common conversation. I'm sure people thought i was ignoring them because i would make eye contact with them, and they would wave, and i would have to keep walking. Also, we weren't really supposed to tell our friends stories. A day as an Emersonian friend makes you realize how much our friendships rely on stories, and conversations, and gossip, and compliments. It depends on it so much to the point where it all almost seems fake. When all day, i wasn't allowed to give a friend a compliment or tell them something to make them feel better, it felt awkward not being able to have a normal conversation with friends, even if they were having a bad day and you couldn't comfort them. We had to use complete honesty. That was hard! When your friends need comforting and you can't give it to them and all you can give to them is sincerity, it makes you feel like a bad friend. It makes it seem like you don't care about them. Not to mention, honesty is not always acceptable in a situation. Often, to protect people we don't tell truth. Sometimes we only tell them pieces of hte truth to try to protect them from painful honesty that would hurt them. Thankfully, on my Emersonian day i didn't have to give anyone painful truth, but it was hard always being honest with people. Telling them their hair looked bad, or telling them you got a bad grade on a paper. There are some things that you don't feel you need your friends to know, but that is what Emerson says we need to stop. He says we need to be completely open with our friends, we need to almost become one person and they have to be the one person who we trust completely and allow to know everything about ourselves. Living as an Emersonian friend for a day was hard. It really made you realize how much we depend on common conversation, and how much we think that fake smiles and gossip can be a definition for a friendship. It makes you realize that it's supposed to be something deeper than that. It would be interesting if we all coould live as Emersonian friends, there would endless trust and endless honesty however, society is not ready to allow us to live like that, at least for not all of us to live like that. A passage that I took my inspiration from for this day states "I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that i may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him wih the simplicity and wholeness with which a chemical atom meets another." -Emerson