Emerson's Nature

The ancient Greeks called the world {kosmos}, beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. This seems partly owing to the eye itself. The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual action of its structure and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of objects, of what character soever, into a well colored and shaded globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose, is round and symmetrical. And as the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even the corpse has its own beauty. But besides this general grace diffused over nature, almost all the individual forms are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone, the wheat-ear, the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the lion's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many trees, as the palm.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Nature". 1836. April 2008 <http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/nature.html>.

Reflection,
The world is beautiful! There are very few people who can find beauty in anything in the world, mostly because we are all too pessimistic and dark. This paragraph says that if light shone strongly enough, anything can be wonderful. That light naturally comes from very few people, but these people are easy to spot. They are the ones that change the lives of everyone around them for the better.
This excerpt is saying that that potential is in everyone. Everyone's eye is capable of seeing the beauty in everything, everyone is capable of being that one influential figure. Nobody will honestly open his eyes though and see the beauty that is nature.

By a Fellow Transcendentalist,
Journal,
Before setting out on my own journey of self-discovery, I have taken it upon myself to read the journals of Emerson, one of my long-time idols and fellow transcendentalists. He seems to be able to express the thoughts that run through my subconscious mind and the mind of all who can see nature as it should be seen.
My eye is ready to be fully opened, world. One more week and I will fully immerse myself in the woods with nobody but myself. My senses will be hightened and I will live for the first time.
-John