Accepting those invitations you can discern

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From Chapter 93 ("The Power and Terror of Thought") of "Emerson: The Mind on Fire" by Robert Richardson, we find the core of Emerson's life:

At the center of Emerson's life and work is a core of these perceptions [Platonic ideas], bound together.  They are not arguments or hypotheses. They are certainly not elements of a system, but neither are they opinions.  When the storms of illusion clear, in the moments at the top of the mountain, these are the perceptions that Emerson retains:

1. The days are gods. That is, everything is divine.
2. Creation is continuous. There is no other world; this one is all there is.
3. Every day is the day of judgment.
4. The purpose of life is individual self-cultivation, self-expression, and fulfillment.
5. Poetry liberates. Thought is also free.
6. The powers of the soul are commensurate with its needs; each new day challenges us with its adequacy and our own.
7. Fundamental perceptions are intuitive and inarguable; all important truths, whether of physics or ethics, must at last be self-evident.
8. Nothing great is ever accomplished without enthusiasm.
9. Life is an ecstasy: Thoreau had it right when he says, "Surely joy is the condition of life."
10. Criticism and commentary, if they are not in the service of enthusiasm and ecstasy, are idle at best, destructive at worst.  Your work, as Ruskin says, should be the praise of what you love.

There is nothing in this list that Emerson had not learned firsthand. These are not abstractions but practical rules for everyday life. The public consequences of such convictions for Emerson were a politics of social liberation, abolitionism, women's suffrage, American Indian rights, opposition to the Mexican War, and civil disobedience when government was wrong. The personal consequence of such perceptions was an almost intolerable awareness that eery morning began with infinite promise. Any book may be read, any idea thought, and action taken.  Anything that has ever been possible to human beings is possible to most of us every time the clocks say six in the morning.  On a day no different from the one now breaking, Shakespeare sat down to being Hamlet and Fuller began her history of the Roman revolution of 1848.  Each of us has all the time there is: each accepts those invitations he can discern. By the same token, each evening brings a reckoning of infinite regret for the paths refused, openings not seen, and actions not taken.