The first time I read this quote in Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” I was in my sophomore year English class. Today, I still believe that this quote was an immense contributor to how I am today. The concept of “contradicting” myself had always been a lingering problem to me. Before I heard this quote, I would often think “how can I be quiet and be heard?” “how can I be understanding and still stay firm in my beliefs?” “how can I gentle yet strong?”
The quote came in a time of my life when I was constantly trying to figure out who I should be, which traits to toss out of myself and which ones to keep. As if I would be able to suppress myself. Before I read Whitman’s words, I did not understand that having so many qualities within me—so many that often I felt as though they were being crammed inside me, uncomfortably being shoved inside like a pair of jeans that don’t quite fit— was a good thing. There were times that I would go as far as to personally describe myself as a sort of hypocrite. How dare I try to be reserved and still wish to speak my mind? It never occurred to me that I was allowed to be both.
The first time I heard “Song of Myself,” I was sitting somewhere in the middle of my English classroom. We read “Song of Myself” in the popcorn style. One of the girls in my class awkwardly read:
“Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.) “
Whitman, W. (1921). Song of myself by Walt Whitman.
And when she finished, the next girl read the next line, and the rest of the class appeared to be unfazed by what they had just heard. Most girls were probably day dreaming about lunch, or stressing about a test they had next period. To them, Whitman’s words were simply a few amongst the thousands they would hear that day.
But, in the middle of my sophomore English classroom, I was experiencing some kind of awakening. Whitman’s words flew into my ears, shook around the insides of my brain, and began building a fortress somewhere inside of my heart.
I no longer felt as though I needed to evaluate each quality of myself, figure out if each one looked right in the house inside myself, and sell those that didn’t fit the color scheme.
From that day on, I lived my life in a roaring silence, with a merciless gentleness, and with an immovable acceptance.
Claire's Blog 