Alexandersmap

    Tag: Henry David Thoreau

    • It Has Potential

      Looking out the window on a brisk morning on Cape Cod. Streaks of dark clouds mix with blue sky. Faint orange hints at the possibilities of the sunrise. It doesn’t look like a 10 right now, but it’s not a bust either. This sunrise has potential.

      Isn’t that the feeling we look for in every morning? We woke up, hey that’s a 10 right there! Aches, pains, ailments and troubles subtract from the score. Broken promises, setbacks, slips of the tongue, angry drivers and blatant disregard for others subtract more. But right now, what might go wrong in the day doesn’t matter a lick. This day has potential.

      “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”—Henry David Thoreau

      It’s a lot easier to start with a 10 and work to keep it there than to wake up with a 4 with a pit in your stomach dreading the day, trying like mad to build something of it. Each day has potential, and so do we, if we’ll make something of the opportunity. So I weave together habits of reading and writing and a bit of movement and great coffee and try to keep the 10 going as long as possible. Sometimes just making it through the day is all you can hope for, and this isn’t a call for blind optimism. But it is a call for gratitude, for starting the day on a positive note and working to keep the streak alive instead of endlessly pushing uphill like Sisyphus.

      My coat is too thin to linger out in the wind chill so I cheat and look out the window at the brightening sky. The sun crested the hills and I walked across the crunchy, frosted lawn and down to the water. The sky is a light blue streaked in faint pink. Pretty, but not a 10. But I’m grateful for the opportunity to see it, and to reflect on the potential this day brings. No day is perfect, but every day can be great, or at least pretty good, and that adds up to a great life.

      “The key to a great life is simply having a bunch of great days. So you can think about it one day at a time.” – Peter Adeney

      “They say: “Think big! Have a compelling vision!” I say: Think small. Do something super cool by the end of the day!” – Peter Drucker

      There you go, start with a 10, do something super cool by the end of the day to keep it a 10 (or as close as you can get it) and string together as many great days as possible. Seems a worthy challenge, and the best opportunity to make something of this potential.

    • Every Morning, So Far, I’m Alive

      “Every morning I walk like this around
      the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
      ever close, I am as good as dead

      Every morning, so far, I’m alive.  And now
      the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
      and burst up into the sky – as though

      all night they had thought of what they would like
      their lives to be, and imagined
      their strong, thick wings.”
       – Mary Oliver, Landscape

      I’m doing Mary Oliver an injustice not putting the entire poem here, for the full meaning of a poem comes from reading the entirety, but then again I’m pointing emphatically towards all of her work, imploring you to read more.  When I first read this poem, Landscape, it was a gut punch for me.  I’ve returned to it a few times and these lines still grab me, for they perfectly capture the frame of mind I’m in in my own life.  It’s not lost on me that Mary Oliver passed away in 2019, and somewhere along the way that may have been how I found and keep returning to her work.

      2019 has been a profound year of growth and change for me, from stoicism to spirituality to poetry, immersive trips to some places close to home and some bucket list travel to places further away.  There’s friction in me that the writing has revealed, whether that’s mid-life nonsense or creeping unfinished business that gnaws at me, disrupting my day-to-day thoughts.  I’ve become a better person this year, but know there’s a long way to go still.  For as much as there is to be grateful for, Memento mori whispers in the wind, and I can hear it more than ever.  Remember, we all must die…  but every morning, so far, I’m alive.  What shall you do with this gift?  More, I say to myself, and this De Mello challenge comes to mind:

      “People don’t live, most of you, you don’t live, you’re just keeping the body alive.  That’s not life.” – Anthony De Mello

      This isn’t a call to leave all that you’ve built, but instead to be fully alive and aware of the world around you.  Break off from the rest of the darkness and be fully alive.  Thoreau didn’t leave Concord, he immersed himself in the world at Walden Pond but still maintained contact with the people in his life.  But his awareness grew in the stillness.

      “Be it life or death, we crave only reality.  If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business…  Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.  I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.  Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      So I’m doing better at this awareness thing, and this making the most of the time you have thing, and I keep flapping the wings and fly when I can.  Life isn’t just stacking one adventure upon another one, real living is immersion and awareness.  Mary Oliver joined De Mello and Thoreau on the other side of life this year, this very year that I’ve made a few leaps forward in being more alive.  Maybe adding her voice to the chorus of whispers from those who have left us was the tipping point, or maybe I was already there.  But I’m grateful for her contribution nonetheless.

    • The Fruitful Kernels of Time

      “The truly efficient laborer will not crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure, and then do but what he loved best.  He is anxious only about the fruitful kernels of time…  Some hours seem not to be occasion for any deed, but for resolves to draw breath in.  We do not directly go about the execution of the purpose that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us and ramble with prepared mind, as if the half were already done.  Our resolution is taking root or hold on the earth then, as seeds first send a shoot downward which is fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upward to the light.”  – Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

      Sometimes I’ll pick up any old Thoreau book and flip to a random page to see what he has to offer.  Thoreau offers a lot. Often he’ll casually flip a healthy dose of wisdom across time, and I’m the better for having found it. I’m in a post-vacation/pre-holidays work funk where I haven’t quite found my stride again (Some hours seem not to be occasion for any deed), and Thoreau’s analogy of the seed setting its root resonates for me. I don’t seem to have this funk with writing, but with my career it’s been a struggle. These are not days to work from home. To find your stride again you need to move, and I’ve booked meetings in faraway places to do just that.

      Writing seems immune to the funk, but the reality is that the fuel for writing is the distraction in my career. Solitude, travel, reading and long walks inspire writing but not sales. Business meetings, commuting, grinding out proposals and crafting concise emails suck the life out of writing but fill the sales pipeline and ultimately keep the lights on. Knowing this, I work to balance the two appropriately. My job isn’t going to offer immortality but it feeds the family. Allocate time accordingly, and write in the quiet corners of the day.

      “Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do.” – R.G. Collingwood

      The reality is that most of us aren’t living in perfect freedom. We live in chains of our own creation. Does that have a negative connotation? Only if you view it that way. For me I happen to enjoy feeding the family, and the grind of the job offers its own rewards too. The writing is transformative, and I regret the years of neglect, but shake myself free of that trap when I recognize it. We’ve only today, and so I produce what I can in this moment, bit-by-bit, like the seed taking root before reaching to the light. Will it yield fruit eventually? Every seed believes so.

    • I Mourn for the Undiscovered

      Up early, reading some Robert Frost poetry I don’t remember reading before.  I’m mesmerized by a line and read on.  I get like this.

      Millions of songs on iTunes, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s out there despite a lifetime focus on music.  I’ve spent huge chunks of my time exploring new music, Shazam’ing songs in loud bars and quiet coffee café and back in the day hanging out in used record stores in Harvard Square trying to find that one gem, that magical song.  And I’ve found many over the years.  Eclectic collection perhaps, but dammit, interesting.

      A bucket list of places to see, and slowly I chip away at it.  My list grows shorter, not because I don’t want to go to all the other places, but because I want to focus on the specific few.  Linger in special places, like listening to a song over and over until you really know it.  Instead of trying to chase everything in a spin of futility.  No, not that.  Give me Thoreau at Walden or Hemingway in Key West.  Or Frost in Derry.  I’ve visited each of these places and understand the power of immersion it had on them.

      I mourn for the undiscovered songs, poems, books and places.  The conversation you never had with a grandparent.  The sunrise you slept through, the lonely beach you didn’t stroll on in winter, the ridge line you didn’t cross, the Northern Lights that danced unseen, the big city that woke up without you, the swims in bracingly cold water and salt on the tongue that you’ll never taste; the places you’ll never be.

      We can’t be everywhere of course.  But I’ll do my best to be present in this moment at least.  Tomorrow will come and I hope to see it.  But don’t mourn for losing today if I should get there.

    • As the Twig is Bent the Tree Inclines

      “Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at least of the best that is in literature.  Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface, nor concluded in the appendix.  Even Virgil’s poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries.  It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, providing that man is still man in the world…  It would be worth the while to select our reading, for books are the society we keep; read only the serenely true; never statistics, nor fiction, nor news, nor reports, nor periodicals, but only great poems, and then they failed, read them again, or perchance write more.” – Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

      I keep returning to Thoreau this year.  And he rarely lets me down.  When he wrote these lines he was referencing the poetry of the long dead Virgil, contemplating the power of his words in his time, even as they meant something slightly different to him.  And now I read Thoreau’s words, in turn contemplating the power of his words in the same fashion.      We all are influenced by the collective wisdom of the ages, and if we’re bold write about our own perceptions of the world to in turn influence others.  I’m not so bold as to compare myself to Virgil or Thoreau mind you, but I’ll keep working towards it nonetheless.

      “Your descendants shall gather your fruits.” – Virgil

      I’ll follow Thoreau’s lead and contemplate some of Virgil’s writing for a moment.  Whether my writing amounts to anything more than the ramblings of a restless mind or the beginning of something greater remains to be seen at this point, but those descendants will know a bit more about that mind for having done the writing.  Neither could have envisioned the world as it is today, and who might be contemplating their words.  We all add to the chorus with our voice.

      “As the twig is bent the tree inclines.” – Virgil

      There’s no doubt that blogging has bent the twig a bit, so to speak.  The benefit of this daily writing habit is that the behavior inclines us more towards greater things.  Ultimately that’s the entire point of the exercise (and thank you for being part of the journey), chipping away at it.  Getting that 10,000 hours in.  Refining, building, becoming something better for the effort and consistency.  And maybe add a little great poetry to the world in the process.

    • No World for the Penitent and Regretful

      When I was in college we used to hang out at The Old Worthen in Lowell, drinking pitchers of cheap beer and playing tunes on the juke box.  Inevitably we’d play My Way by Frank Sinatra (written by Paul Anka) and sing the lyrics together in the most world-weary, seasoned way you can muster up when you’re only 21 or so and haven’t been knocked down a few times.

      “Regrets, I’ve had a few
      But then again, too few to mention
      I did what I had to do
      And saw it through without exemption”

      Regrets come with living life.  You make trade-offs along the way, like getting married and raising children instead of crewing on some sailboat in the Greek Isles with nothing but a copy of The Odyssey with you.  I may have thought of doing that once or twice around the time I was singing that song in that bar, and I’d blame it on the ghost of Jack Kerouac whispering in my ear.  On the whole I’ll take the trade-off and don’t look back, unless prompted to.  This morning I was prompted when two quotes in succession resonated for me.  First up was a Joan Didion quote pulled from today’s entry in The Daily Stoic.  Inspired, I drew more of it from a Brain Pickings blog after a quick search and offer some of it here:

      “The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others — who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something people with courage can do without…  To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals with one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves…  Character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self-respect springs.” – Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays

      What jolted me was in Didion’s writing, besides the sheer brilliance of her prose, were two phrases in particular: counting up the sins of commissions and omission…  and …the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness.  Who of us, who’s lived a life of any tenure, not counted up the things we’ve done that we’d rather not have done, the things we didn’t do that we wish we had, and regret not taking the leap into some adventure out of laziness or fear?  The older I get the more I say to myself and anyone who asks, just do it.  If you aren’t betraying trust, breaking promises, or taking foolhardy risks, then just do it.  Live with self-respect, do the right thing, accept responsibility for [your] own life.

      And then minutes later I stumbled on this Thoreau quote, a portion of which I’d once posted in an old social media post from years ago, where he (not surprisingly) reminds himself similarly:

      “There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season. There is a time to watch the ripples on Ripple Lake, to look for arrowheads, to study the rocks and lichens, a time to walk on sandy deserts; and the observer of nature must improve these seasons as much as the farmer his. So boys fly kites and play ball or hawkie at particular times all over the State. A wise man will know what game to play to-day, and play it. We must not be governed by rigid rules, as by the almanac, but let the season rule us. The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature’s. Nothing must be postponed. Take time by the forelock. Now or never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. Where the good husbandman is, there is the good soil. Take any other course, and life will be a succession of regrets. Let us see vessels sailing prosperously before the wind, and not simply stranded barks. There is no world for the penitent and regretful.” – Henry David Thoreau, from his journal on April 24, 1859

      “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” – Marcus Aurelius

      Thoreau wrote that 160 years ago as a reminder to himself, just as Marcus Aurelius wrote his own reminder in Meditations. Didion weighs in with her own message.  By all means, live with character and self-respect, but do make the most of this opportunity you’ve been given. Living in the past is useless.  Living in the future is delusional.  There’s only now.  Today.

    • Sunset

      Friday evening I had the opportunity to take a cruise on Big Island Pond, a pristine and beautiful lake in Atkinson, Hampstead and Derry, New Hampshire.  There’s a ritual that is both familiar to me and yet still new.  Those who live there with boats tend to cluster out in a certain spot at a certain time of day to watch the sun drop below the horizon.  Sunsets and water do go well together, and this one was perfect.  And so I participated in yet another sunset ritual.  I recalled another time last summer when I was in a spot very close to where I was, watching the sunset on the same boat with a couple of friends, Dan and Dave, when Dan got a call from his mother saying his father had fallen down.  We abandoned the sunset for service, and the three of us drove over to his mother’s house to help.  His father passed away a couple of weeks later, leaving a remarkable legacy behind him.

      Over the last 18 months I’ve sought out sunsets in faraway places and right back here at home.  Joining the party on Mallory Square in Key West, and making our own party on a pontoon boat in New Hampshire; wrapping up the day in assorted faraway places from Sagres on the edge of continental Europe to Buffalo, on the edge of Western New York.  From 25,000 feet above New Brunswick back to sea level on Buzzards Bay.  I’m a shameless seeker of sunsets, and celebrate the moment for all that it represents.

      Last night I was wrapping up a day of yard work and watched the bright, last rays of the sun shining horizontally through the woods, illuminating the western trunks with a remarkable glow.  I saw deep in the woods a bright red pole rising out of the forest that I’d never seen before in twenty years looking back into these woods.  It was the bark of a white pine tree glowing in the setting sun with a red brilliance I’d never realized before.  I was struck by the uniqueness of the moment and almost walked out into the woods to visit the tree before reason took over and I remained where I was.

      This morning I finished reading Walking, by Henry David Thoreau.  It was a quick but lovely read, based on a lecture that he’d done several times before publishing it.  I was jolted in the final paragraphs when Thoreau described a scene very similar to what I had experienced last night:

      “We had a remarkable sunset one day last November.  I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold, gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon….  while our shadows stretched long over the meadow east-ward, as if we were the only motes in its beams.  It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow.  When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever, an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still.” 

      “…We walked in so pure and bright a light, gliding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it.  The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.

      So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walking

      It isn’t lost on me that I’ve been drawn to Thoreau at this stage of my life.  It may be that I’m just now refocusing on the world around me, but I don’t believe that’s the case.  I think he’s just been waiting for another person to dance with, and I’ve indicated a readiness to tango.  His analogy of stepping into heaven to the brightest beams of a sunset isn’t uniquely his, but his phrasing is lovely.  Some day we’ll all catch our final sunset, and reflect on the life we’re leaving for whatever lies beyond the horizon.  But please, not today.

    • Two Henry’s

      “Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of this unknown ocean, the bounds of which he knows not, and turns upon his footprints for an instant….  Then recommences his adventurous career westward as in the earliest ages.” – Henry David Thoreau quoting Arnold Henry Guyot, Walking

      Infante D. Henrique, better known as Henry the Navigator, was born in 1394 and died in 1460. Henry, with political clout from his relationship with his brother the King of Portugal and monetary clout from The Order of Christ, inspired the Age of Discovery 500 years ago.  The Portuguese would go on to discover Madeira 600 years ago this year, then the Azores, and further down the coast of Africa during his lifetime, and inspire like voyages by Christopher Columbus and others well after his death.  I came across a statue of Henry the Navigator in Sagres, Portugal last year when I was exploring the area.  The statue faces towards Madeira and the coast of Africa; Henry’s focus half a millennium ago.

      No place in continental Europe makes you feel like you’re on the shore of an unknown ocean more than the western coast of Portugal.  Of course, I’d flown over that ocean to get to Portugal, but this was a time when pirates were a common threat for coastal communities and the thought of sailing beyond the horizon was likely terrifying for most.  It wasn’t until larger sailing vessels were built that the Portuguese and later other European explorers would take the leap into the unknown.

      There was a dark side to exploration, as local populations were exploited, enslaved, murdered or exposed to lethal diseases for the first time.  Progress for some is regression or annihilation for others.  The spirit of exploration and discovery is on the face admirable, and I like to think I carry some of that spirit within me, just as Thoreau did.  Standing on the edge of a hundred foot cliff with breaking waves reaching up halfway to welcome me, one catches the spirit of those words; Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of this unknown ocean.  This would give any sane person pause.  But the courage to move on anyway opened up an entire world for these Portuguese explorers.

      I have Scottish and English blood in my veins, but I also have Portuguese blood.  I like to think that exploration and adventure are a part of my DNA.  And while my relative low risk exploration of the coast of Portugal pales in comparison to the sailors of centuries past, the serve to expand my perspective on the original European explorers who first set sight on America.  As visiting Portugal opened up my perspective on where these souls came from, visiting the Santa Maria replica gave me a greater appreciation for just how small those Nau’s were.  On a vast, unknown ocean, with no previous knowledge of currents and at the whim of the weather, courage was only part of what these explorers needed.  They also needed luck.

      Henry David Thoreau quoted Guyot even as he disagreed with many of his theories.  Thoreau was an explorer whose vehicle of choice were his feet.  I think he would have been fascinated with the fisherman’s trails, the stunning Rota Vicentina, that wind along the coast from Sagres north. Hiking this trail was a highlight for me, and I wish I’d had more time to fully explore the region.

      Thoreau writes of the magic of exploration, and his tendency to head southwest in his journeys away from home.  There is no point further Southwest in Portugal than Cape of St. Vincent and it’s distinctive lighthouse. Had Thoreau stood on the cliffs, as I imagine Henry the Navigator once did and I had the opportunity to do in my own humble way, I think he might have looked westward and recalled his own words, appropriate for this extraordinary place:  “We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.  The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions.”  That spirit seems as true today as it was in 1860 or in 1460.

    • Fences and Forests

      “At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only – when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to the PUBLIC road, and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walking

      When I moved into the house I’m living in twenty years ago, when this cul de sac was just being built, I watched a dozen deer run through the woods and diagonally through the backyard out to the front where the driveway is and then off to wherever they roamed from there.  A few years after that I became annoyed with one of my neighbors central vacuum system which didn’t (and still doesn’t) have any form of muffler on it.  I put up a six foot privacy fence on that side of the house to block out the noise a bit.  Fences make good neighbors, they say.

      A few years after that we got a very energetic one year old black lab and put him on a run, which was a cable strung tightly between two trees in the backyard with his chain hanging down, giving him some freedom of movement but not enough.  Eventually we fenced in the backyard entirely, and he had room to roam without running away.  Well, we thought so at the time.  Snow pack and exceptional climbing skills proved the fence wasn’t always as high as it needed to be.

      Then came the pool, and it justified the investment in the fence.  And that fence continues to serve us well, in theory keeping the young neighborhood kids out of the pool while being compliant with the town’s codes which require a fenced-in pool.  With a pool you have liability.  Lawyers love pools. Insurance companies love fences.

      The forest remains timeless.  It’s just on the other side of that fence, and it’s largely as it was twenty years ago, and twenty years before that.  It continues to invite itself back into the yard.  After all the backyard was once part of the forest and perhaps one day it will be again.  I see the deer sometimes just on the other side of the fence.  But they don’t run through the yard anymore.

      Thoreau would find his walking to be very different than it was when he wrote those words.  Aside from conservation land and State Parks like Walden the landscape is completely different than it was for him.  Roads are paved, land is subdivided, fences are put up to screen annoying neighbors or to protect pool owners from wandering toddlers.  Thoreau might say that the evil days have indeed come.  And looking at the building boom going on seemingly everywhere I can’t help but think that myself.  Houses and residential communities popping up everywhere.  Roads getting more and more congested.  Mixed-use development projects all the rage.

      I read a book recently that described the frustration that a family had at the development of Bedford, New Hampshire back in the 1960’s.  I know the stretch of road they described as it is today, but never knew it as the quiet country road portrayed in the book.  They ended up moving further north into Maine.  And maybe moving further away is the answer.  Or maybe it starts with taking care of your own backyard before it’s too late.  Conservation and preservation, zoning restrictions, political will and public demand are the formula for open space.  Developers rule most town halls nowadays.  When people are indifferent to the land around them the void gets filled by people who build 55 plus housing developments.  This isn’t developer bashing – developers do a lot of great things and I’ve directly benefited from development.  It’s more a call to all of us to demand more for the environment we’re creating for ourselves and future generations.  A little preservation goes a long way.

    • Walden & High Agency

      The great thing about motivational quotes is they represent wisdom and offer insight for us in our own lives, conveniently boiled down from a pile of words.  The drawback, of course, is that you’re only reading a small part of whatever the quoted person was trying to say, usually twisted into some new meaning in its abbreviated form.  As I’ve re-read and re-discovered Walden, as you may expect many old, familiar quotes pop up.  This particular thread from the Conclusion chapter, takes on a much deeper meaning when you consume everything Thoreau wrote (the oft-quoted  words in bold):

      “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.  Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.  It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves…  The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels.  How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!”

      “I learned this, at least by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.  He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of things.  In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.  If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost, that is where they should be.  Now put the foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      As romantic a notion as building castles in the air is, these words seem just a little too up with people for general consumption on their own.  Like one of those motivational posters you see in offices around the world.  But taken in the context of the rest of the paragraph, they become more meaningful.  Thoreau is reminding us that we all fall into routines as individuals, and also as societies, but if we only have the courage to break out of those routines in focused pursuit of loftier objectives, the universe aligns to support us in achieving these objectives.

      Reading Walden again, I’ve realized that I glazed over much of it the first time I read it as a teenager.  The words simply didn’t mean as much to me then as they do now.  But isn’t that the case with everything?  We all pick up a little wisdom as we move through life.  But we also pick up bad habits, assumptions and biases, and become the sum of the parts around us.  Choose your path, establish those tiny, sticky habits that move you towards your objective, surround yourself with the right people and you will pass that invisible boundary Thoreau describes.  Routines can build you into something much greater than you imagine, but they can also hold you down.  Get off the worn-down mental path and see the world in a new way.

      “The universe is bigger than our views of it.” – Henry David Thoreau

      Speaking of the universe, it seems to align with the way I’m thinking at a given moment.  I know that’s not entirely accurate, I just notice things more when I happen to be thinking about something related to it, like suddenly seeing white Honda Accords everywhere as soon as you start driving one.  So upon posting this article I scanned Twitter briefly and what do I find but George Mack’s Twitter thread about High Agency, which he heard about from a Tim Ferriss interview with Eric Weinstein:

      “High Agency is a sense that the story given to you by other people about what you can/cannot do is just that – a story.  [A] High Agency person looks to bend reality to their will.  They either find a way or they make a way.  [A] Low Agency person accepts the story that is given to them.  They never question it.  They are passive.  They outsource all their decision-making to other people.

      So a Low Agency person believes the world is as people say it is.  That’s just the way things are.  A High Agency person believes the universe is bigger than our view of it, as Thoreau so eloquently states it.  Be the change you want to see in the world. and what is more High Agency than “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost, that is where they should be.  Now put the foundations under them.”?