I live close to Concord, Massachusetts which means that whenever I’m feeling too adequate, I can recalibrate by taking a modest bike ride past the homes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. And if I’m still feeling too good about myself, I can go a bit father to a pond where Henry David Thoreau hung out for a couple of years.

Even among these luminaries, Emerson—an essayist and poet who was one of 19th century America’s greatest intellectual forces—is special. Nicknamed the “Sage of Concord,” he’s pictured on today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp, issued on February 5, 1940. The stamp one of the 35 issued that year honoring famous Americans, including five writers: Emerson, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), and Louisa May Alcott, whose stamp was also issued on February 5, 1940. And, I’m happy to report, unlike some others portrayed in the series – such as Stephen Foster and John James Audubon – Emerson’s he was an ardent abolitionist, is not badly tarnished by an association with slavery or something else horrific.

Once widely read – or at least widely assigned – Emerson has somewhat faded from public view
But even though he’s not read as much as he once was, he still exerts an strong influence on contemporary life. Curious about its extent, I decided to see what happened if I Googled “Ralph Waldo Emerson” to see how often, and in what way, his name appeared in the news. It turns out he’s ubiquitous.

In an obituary for Dr. Ayman El-Sheikh, who had been chief of hematology/oncology at Dayton Children’s Hospital, Dr. Adam Mezoff, the hospital’s chief medical officer, noted: “Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, ‘It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.'”

In an online Q and A, a local newspaper asked Belen, New Mexico Mayor Jerah Cordova, “What’s the best advice you ever received?” He replied: “My life’s guiding light is Ralph Waldo Emerson….He got me through challenging times with this line from ‘Self-Reliance,’…’My life is not an apology, but a life.’ Which is to say, we must learn and move forward.”

There are more prosaic references too. A law.com article titled “Broken Halos: The Goal of the Mediator is to Balance Assessments” includes Emerson’s statement that “I would rather be a thorn in the side than an echo” An article on “Dealing with Troublesome Leaders” includes one of Emerson’s most famous lines “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” And a piece on trailblazers in the green beauty industry notes “They breathe the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “it is true that a candle losses nothing by lighting another candle.”

But wait…there’s more. Emerson regularly shows up because many streets and buildings are named after him as shown by one piece that asked: “what do Schuyler Colfax, William Cullen Bryant or Ralph Waldo Emerson have to do with Minneapolis?” Yet another piece noted, “after a $13 million renovation, the center moved into what had previously been the Ralph Waldo Emerson school building.”

And then there was the “Smart Company” piece, titled “Jeff Bezos is stepping down as Amazon CEO, but these five eccentric leadership tips live on,” which noted that in 2018, Bezos tweeted “Love this quote. It’s been on my fridge for years, and I see every time I open the door. #Emerson.”

“To laugh often and love much;” the pictured quote showed, “to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

(Someone responded to the post, by the way, by saying “How about paying federal taxes. Giving back to Society? To win the respect of all kinds of people, to NOT look for the best in others, to look for imperfection. To embrace life and realizing you have lived because there are people around you, who makes you feel alive. Think!)

At one level, this all shows that we’ve reduced Emerson to a caricatured wise man full of pithy quotes, rather than a thoughtful, rigorous thinker whose writing needs to be read closely.

This is, after all, the person Theodore Parker, a leading 19th century minister and transcendentalist, was talking about when he wrote: “the brilliant genius of Emerson rose in the winter nights, and hung over Boston, drawing the eyes of ingenuous young people to look up to that great new star, a beauty and a mystery, which charmed for the moment, while it gave also perennial inspiration, as it led them forward along new paths, and towards new hopes.” Moreover, he not only influenced contemporary writers, such as Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau but also many later thinkers and writers including Nietzsche and William James. (Others weren’t as enamored; T.S. Eliot, for example, contended his essays were an “encumbrance”.)

But even the caricatured Emerson is valuable. Indeed, the idea of Emerson has always been powerful. Wesley Mott, the founder and president of the Emerson Society, for example said that many of the people who attended one of the more than 1,500 public lectures Emerson gave in his life often “went away tremendously uplifted-and had no idea what they just heard.”

I probably would have been among those people. And while going Emerson’s house might sometimes help me when I feel “too adequate” it also helps me when I feel less than adequate and need to be reminded to “laugh often and love much.”

Be well, stay safe, “find the best in others” try to “leave the world a bit better,” fight for justice, and work for peace.