Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've spoken about Emerson's essay Experience, and specifically this section, to several people over the past months. Before November 16, I think I'd only read excerpts of his work in high school English class and never do I think I came across this essay - or at least I don't recall reading it if it was assigned. I found myself re-reading it last night and was once again drawn to this passage.

* * *

The only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is. That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into the reality, for contact with which, we would even pay the costly price of sons and lovers. Was it Boscovich who found out that bodies never come in contact? Well, souls, never touch their objects. An unnavigable sea washes silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with. Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate - no more. I cannot get it nearer to me. If to-morrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me - neither better nor worse. So is it with this calamity: it does not touch me: something which I fancied was a part of me, which could be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls from me, and leaves no scar. It was caducous. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into the real nature. The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at last is reality that will not dodge us.