On the train this morning, I read some of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance. I first read the essay in the eleventh grade in Mr. Calahan’s class on Castle Park High School in Chula Visa (San Diego County). It had an affect on me, as it does on lots of high school kids, probably. But it seems to make more sense to me every time I read it.

Each time I go through it, I highlight something different. Today, I read:
And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

“Now we are men” and not “minors and invalids in a protected corner.” How many times is that easy to forget? How many times can you shrug something off because someone else will take care of it? How often can you shrug off personal responsibility because you are not alone and everyone is in debt, overweight, etc?

Like a lot of adults, I look at my life and not feel like I’ve grown up. I still have superiors. I still obey authority. I still question my actions. I still yearn for the blanket of dogma to tell me what to do.

Yet I’m never certain I am doing the right thing-like I always assumed my parents were. They all made it look so simple. They were all so serious. But were they men?

They stood in line. They did what they were told. They took their lives as it was handed to them and carried out their orders. They went to work. They paid their taxes. They obeyed the law. The coloured in the lines.

Living in London now, I was in a conversation with a colleague at the pub last week. He asked why I studied American history for my degree. Well, the first reason, or course, is because I am American. Secondly, I love the idea of people doing something for the first time. I know some historians or just history buffs who take great interest in what agriculture was like in the nineteenth century or how the cotton-gin was made or how people had to walk so many miles to school. That is not what piques my interests.

I love the idea that people can change the world when they are pushed too far. My forefathers did it in the American Revolution. The civil rights campaigners did it in the sixties and the abolitionists did it in the civil war. Ghandi did it. Mandela. Lincoln. Napoleon.

They all said enough. They put themselves in harms way. They didn’t accept the world the way it was. When the signers of the Declaration of Independence signed that document, they signed their death warrants.
When you are pushed too far, could you rise up and change the world?
You may claim to be happy. You may say you have nothing to complain about. You may not think you are being pushed around. We pay 40% taxes. We get taxed (in the UK) for something like 80% of our petrol. We let them build a dome, when they can’t afford to keep the NHS up to standard.

Once upon a time, people said “Now we are men”.

As I sit here on the train home from Paddington station, I see all the graffiti lining the buildings, call boxes, and fences surrounding the rails. It looks awful. Then, when I actually do take time to watch the whole trip and ignore my laptop for a while, I can see the urban landscape turn into a rural one. Graffiti turns into farmland. The green that has been admired for hundreds of years replaces the urban landscape which we haven’t yet acquired a taste for.

In the neighbourhood I grew up in, in South San Diego, graffiti was very common. We had a lot near our street at Palm avenue, but going a half-mile south to Del Sol Boulevard was the worst. It’s cleaned up now, but in the eighties gang activity was really bad and gang names sprawled every brick wall, green electricity box, telephone pole–you name it. When I go back now, it’s all cleaned up very well. Either the gangsters have grown up and become responsible or the city is investing a lot of money on cleaning up.

Have you ever judged graffiti? I rarely see beautiful images like in the movie “Beat Street”. Instead, it is a scribbled name (or more likely, a gang name). The one I see most when leaving London is the name Relik. I’m not sure what that means but this guy must have writers cramp by now.

I don’t particularly care for people who write on walls. It’s juvenile and defaces things people try to make beautiful. But sometimes, you just have to marvel at how kids (or twenty-somethings) can reach some of these hard-to-reach places. You see their names on train overpasses, signals, between the tracks–everywhere.

I admire those who go where the tamer vandals wouldn’t dare. I can imagine it is late at night so the trains don’t run so often. A groups of guys (I imagine them to be young men) go out and look for something to do. They decide (most likely spontaneously) to write on walls. They giggle because of the fear of getting caught. While most will stay at the edges, a few brave vandals will risk their lives running out between the tracks, or climbing over the fence on an overpass and hanging over the wall to write-their name.

There is nothing deep about what is written. Nothing profound. It serves no purpose. It doesn’t beautify the neighbourhoods (it does the opposite). All it is is a form of adventurous self expression.

There is a big difference between someone spray-painting a larger-than life signature on a wall and some misguided comedian writing a few rude words on a bathroom stall with a cheap pen.

The names will be painted over, but the adventure will be remembered.

Just a thought. I know I would feel differently if it was done on my house, or fence, or whatever. But when it doesn’t affect you, can you bring yourself to admire the expression?