Guidance for Life from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts everything you said today.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

In an earlier post, I described how, while in junior high school I had written on a piece of paper those quotes which had mightily impressed me and, after folding that paper multiple times, placed it in my wallet and carried it with me faithfully for many years. The quote above, from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance, is one of the quotes that I scratched in my barely legible adolescent handwriting onto that piece of paper. Those who had the misfortune to work with me over the years, know well that I took the import of that quote to heart.

In truth, as I oft explained to my colleagues, it was my duty, when articulating an idea or position, to defend it with vigorous rationality until reason and evidence had persuaded me of the error of my position. It was also my duty, I advised, to listen carefully to the construct of their opposing arguments, and to present their arguments to myself even more ably than they had, if I were able, so as to ensure the integrity of my position. But, until I was ultimately persuaded of the error of my position, there would be no hint that I was considering the abandonment of my position and I continued to defend it in “hard words.”

My approach to case discussions, in conformity with the quote above, sometimes resulted in what would appear to colleagues as a sudden and inexplicable change in my position on cases: suddenly I was in agreement with them whereas I appeared solidly opposed the day before and unpersuaded by all arguments and reason. Friends, hard words do not mean one is deaf to reason, persuasion, and commitment to duty (e.g., to search for truth). Regardless of my hard words in articulation of my position, I am always listening, persuadable, and picking up the arguments of my interlocutors to make their arguments better than even they so that I may determine if their position should prevail over mine. And if their position, based on reason, should prevail, it will prevail, and I will embrace it without being fearful of the seeming contradiction. For the seeming contradiction is no contradiction at all, in my mind. And this observation leads nicely to the final paragraph.

Some may recognize that the quote above comes from the paragraph in the essay which begins with an even more famous quote – a quote that did not make much of an impression upon me when I first read it over five decades ago: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Indeed.