Misunderstood Journal

Ralph Waldo Emerson "To be great is to be misunderstood." Emerson wrote this in Self-Reliance in 1841 — an essay that was itself misunderstood for years, taken as a call to selfishness when it was actually a call to authenticity. He was making a list of people history had initially dismissed: Pythagoras, Socrates, Jesus, Luther, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton. The pattern wasn't failure. It was timing. Every one of them was right before the world was ready for them to be right. Being ahead of where the room is willing to go has a cost. Emerson thought it was worth paying. What You're Writing In The cover builds to the word that costs the most — GREAT arrives first, then MIS—UNDER—STOOD. follows in gold, breaking across lines the way the idea breaks across eras. Also in the Ralph Waldo Emerson collection: The Misunderstood Tee and Misunderstood Mug. About This Journal Hardcover bound journal 80 lined, cream-colored pages Size: 5.5" × 8.5" Built-in elastic closure Ribbon page marker Expandable inner pocket Who It's For The one whose best ideas arrive before anyone else is ready for them. The person who's been called difficult by people who eventually came around. Anyone who's learned that being early and being wrong feel identical from the outside. Write the ideas they'll catch up to. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Plain English Lived: 1803–1882, Concord, Massachusetts Left the ministry at 29 because he couldn't in good conscience perform communion — then spent the rest of his life writing about why individuals shouldn't need institutions to tell them what to believe Founded the Transcendentalist movement; mentored Thoreau, Whitman, and a generation of American thinkers Self-Reliance is one of the most quoted American essays ever written — and still one of the most misread