Ralph Waldo Emerson...

So I was watching one of my favorite shows last night, Good Eats, and Alton Brown quoted Emerson... Now I was never an avid reader, but luckily my wife is and has helped me appreciate literature. I'm still an infant when it comes to reading, but am working on getting books under my belt (my wife says slowly though as she reads 5 or 6 books to my 1 ;-). Anyway, the reason this quote hit home with me is that it pretty much describes me perfectly!!!

"There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg." - Emerson

Ok... so it's a cooking show, but I think one of the reasons I like it so much is that Alton talks about the science behind it which my analytical mind eats up. In almost every episode, he shows that there really is a "best" way of cooking and he tells you why.

So, part of my personality (one that frustrates my loving wife to NO END!!!) is that I always think of things in that same way. In my mind, there's almost always is a "best" way of doing things. I hate this part of me sometimes because it really makes things frustrating for people around me. My wife has helped me greatly with letting go when it's something silly, but it doesn't mean my head still hurts from seeing it done the "wrong" way!!! I'm pretty sure this trait is just part of me, but my mom is the same way so I'm sure it's learned as well.

Anyone else have the same personality trait where they feel like there is always a "best" way of doing everything? When it frustrates you to see someone fill the dishwasher in-efficiantly and you just want to re-do the whole thing??? Maybe you are stuck riding in a car with someone who just is NOT taking the "best" route to where you are going and you just want to rip the wheel out of their hand!!! LOL

Well, let me hear your stories so I don't feel like I'm alone here!!!

Off this subject... I leave you with a few really cool Emerson quotes I found...

"Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old."

"A friend is one before whom I may think aloud." - I LOVE this one!!!

"We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul." - OK Seriously... how many times did you have to read this??? or did you just give up? ;-)

"To be great is to be misunderstood."

"None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone."

- MC