Self-Reliance

In the essay "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He explains how being independent and not following the crowd is the key to being happy in life. People who follow the crowd don't think for themselves and don't create there own ideas. He mentions many historically famous people who were independent and misunderstood by everyone else and became great from being self-reliant. "Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”In order to be great you must take that step away from the crowd and go your own direction in life and that is the definition of being self-reliant.