Patience & Caring.

The author of our essay “Self- Reliance”,  Ralph Waldo Emerson believed in the need for people to develop their independence and strengthen their character, so yes, the values “Patience” and “Caring” are two that we can find in this essay, specially through reflection of the lectures the author shares with the readers.

In this essay the author tells us a lot about our self value as individuals, and how we should never show any signs of conformation, but “care” enough for our lives so that we always strive to be someone better and to prosper in the situations and places life has put us in.

Also, if we cared about ourselves, shouldn’t we be critic enough to explore if what we believed and thought be our own thoughts and not wholly influenced by society? Or that what the thing we were doing in life be of good or bad nature? Or to care enough about our beliefs so that the critics of other people don't influence us as much that we ignore our own prerogative of free thought?

We owe it to ourselves to trust the decisions we make.

But not only the positive version of caring is displayed in this essay; there is also a part that expresses the importance of “not caring”, not caring about what people say about us, or they way we decide to do certain things, or even the decision we take of choosing to live by our own impulses, which the author exhibits in the form of a conversation he had with an adviser when he was young, to which he basically replied that he just did not care, and that the only thing that mattered was what he believed was correct.

This essay also comments that we should accept our place on this Earth, and in order to strive in our position on Earth, whether good or bad, we obviously need patience.

Patience is one of those virtues that makes or breaks a man, since it lays on the thin line between inactivity and production, and also the person who lacks it will most likely fall outside the circles of this line and wont prosper at all, which is contrary to what the author of this essay is trying to teach. Instead, be patient with yourself, because in doing that you’d be allowing yourself to grow and assure yourself and your opinions on a lot of matters.

In my opinion this essay focuses mainly on trusting ourselves and relying on our beliefs and opinions, as the title implies, but what the author tries to say can fit perfectly on many other topics, or in this case, on many other values, like patience and caring, and that they are a building structure to the kind of person the author is encouraging the reader to be. And we should apply patience and caring to our daily life to deal with ourselves and to deal with other “great and misunderstood” people we might encounter in life.