Do you have a book, poem, short story, author that has inspired you in some way? fiction or non fiction
In high school I was introduced to the transcendentalist- Ralph Waldo Emerson and others in the movement
http://www.transcendentalists.com/what.htm
Emerson wrote about self reliance - http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm
not conforming to what other deem as acceptable - how there is a value in nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature2.htm
I was inspired by his writings along with Thoreau (Walden) http://www.kenkifer.com/Thoreau/
the movie Dead Poet's Society used may of the ideas from this movement.
"Emerson, in "Nature," tries to capture the feeling of conversion as experienced during his (or his narrator's) sojourn in the woods. In a famous passage that has become a classic yet frequently parodied description of the "transcendent moment," he writes:
" In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.(11)
I found these works to be inspiring and they really spoke to me at the time and infact still does to this day
