U2 - "Beautiful Day"

    The U2 song "Beautiful Day" is an excellent example of modern day transcendentalism because it talks about going beyond and appreciating the small things in life. The lyrics talk about seizing the day while you can, giving up what you don't need, and taking the time to appreciate nature and a non-materialistic life, among other things, like self reliance, intuition, and optimism.

 "Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! (Thoreau 204)."

• This quote from Walden connects to the quote from the song "The traffic is stuck / And you're not moving anywhere" because it shows the transcendental idea of moving beyond society and the things in life that keeps one from focussing on the true meaning of life. There are so many little things in life that distract us and keep us from really becoming on who we are. With so many trivalities, things like traffic and specificities distracting us, there is little to no time to engage the other ideas of transcendentalism, like intuition, 

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think (Emerson 184)."

• Emerson, in Self Reliance, is stating that he needs to focus on himself, and not on the people and society around him. This is parralleled in the line "I know I'm not a hopeless case" from Beautiful Day. This line implies that that is what the world is saying about the singer, saying that there is no hope for him. However, this works as an example of transcendentalism because the writer goes beyond, transcends the words of the rest of the world because he knows that isn't true. He knows there is more to himself than that, and rather than listen to what society is telling him, he is breaking free of that. Emerson was a strong proponent of this idea.

"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile (Emerson 180)."

• The idealism in this quote from Nature is important because it shows how the common man looks up at the stars every night and does not appreciate them. The common man sees the stars as something normal, something that is simply a part of life, something that does not go beyond what is there. However, Emerson is trying to make us see that the stars are more than what they appear, and that we should appreciate them every time we see them. The line "It's a beautiful day / Don't let it get away" follows that same line of thinking in the way that we rarely appreciate or see beyond the little things, like stars or a pretty day, to the point where we lose a lot of the meaning behind them.

The song "Beautiful Day" is an example of transcendentalism because it incorporates trascendental ideas like idealism, self-reliance, intuition, and optimism. It talks about looking at the world in a new way, and going above and beyond just what we think the world is, and siezing the day while we can.