L: Thomas Carlyle; R: Ralph Waldo Emerson (Images curtesy of wikimedia.org)
"Yet the great truths are always at hand, and all the tragedy of individual life is separated how thinly from that universal nature which obliterates all ranks, all evils, all individualities. How little of you is in your will! Above your will how intimately are you related to all of us! In God we meet. Therein we are, hence we descend upon Time and these infinitesimal facts of Christendom, and Trade, and England Old and New. Wake the soul now drunk with a sleep, and we overleap at a bound the obstructions, the griefs, the mistakes, of years, and the air we breathe is so vital that the Past serves to contribute nothing to the result."
In this letter of September 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson implores Thomas Carlyle to take better care of his health - Emerson had just lost his brother Charles aged 27, and Carlyle was working fiendishly to re-write his book on the French Revolution which had been accidentally destroyed by a friend, damaging his health.
Carlyle reminds me of the way I work - shunning friends and family, focusing solely on the work at hand - and Emerson's imploring to look beyond our own little will to the All, to God to our communal life in Christ strikes home.
Can a life-long Carlyle change mid-life into an Emerson?
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