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    Tag: Henry David Thoreau

    • Listen Carefully, Spend Wisely

      Colm Doherty: I just have this tremendous sense of time slipping away from me, Pádraic. And I think I need to spend the time I have left thinking and composing. Just trying not to listen to any more of the dull things that you have to say for yourself.
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Are you dying?
      Colm Doherty: No, I’m not dying.
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: But then you’ve loads of time.
      Colm Doherty: For chatting?
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Aye.
      Colm Doherty: For aimless chatting?
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Not for aimless chatting. For good, normal chatting.
      Colm Doherty: So, we’ll keep aimlessly chatting, and me life’ll keep dwindling. And in twelve years, I’ll die with nothing to show for it, bar the chats I’ve had with a limited man, is that it?
      — Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin

      There’s a darkness in this film that is borne of desperation. The characters react to the bleak reality of their lives in different ways. Colm and Pádraic’s sister, Siobhan Súilleabháin, desperately seek something beyond their relentlessly trivial existence. Pádraic sees nothing at all wrong with living out his days one exactly the same as the one before. And this raises the central question of the film, one we all faced at the height of the pandemic: what are we actually doing with our time? Is this all there is for us, or might we create something meaningful that lives beyond us before we pass? These are questions many of us wrestle with, while others contentedly choose more of the same. We each reconcile our brief dance with the world in our own way.

      These questions are timeless, even if we aren’t. Indeed, this temporary shelf life drives us to find answers. Our old friend Thoreau famously observed in the beginning pages of Walden that “the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation”. We bear the weight of these questions still, amplified by that realization that time is slipping away. Memento mori, friends. Carpe diem.

      The thing is, we shouldn’t despair at the thought. There ought to be freedom in that realization. We have an opportunity to amplify our living, and make it resonate in our time. We have the opportunity to create something that lives beyond ourselves, something that ripples. Alternatively, we might simply live. Neither choice is wrong, unless we’re quietly telling ourselves it is. The answer for each of us is to listen carefully, and spend wisely.

    • A Walk Around Walden Pond

      A visit to Walden Pond can be immersive, if you go at the right time. Many people go in summer to swim and enjoy the pristine water. Many fish for large mouth bass and other prizes. But the pilgrims go to visit Henry David Thoreau’s famous pond and the woods surrounding it. I’ve watched the place change over the years, but the pond and woods remain largely as Thoreau would recognize.

      You must treat a brief visit to Walden as you would a visit to a nightclub with a cover charge. There’s a flat fee of $30 USD to park. That applies for an hour or the entire day. There’s a lower fee, apparently, for Massachusetts residents. I suppose you can also opt for other ways to get to Walden Pond, but this was the simplest way to spend time at a place. The area surrounding Walden Pond is a mix of highway, commuter railroad (as it was in Thoreau’s time), capped landfill and houses increasingly further out of reach for someone choosing the lifestyle of the person who made this place famous.

      Early December is considered late autumn, but my visit felt more mid-autumn, with temperatures warmer than they should be this time of year. Henry David Thoreau would have shaken his head, I think, at some of the same behavior he observed in his day leading to the climate change we’re experiencing today but generally sitting on our hands about. But it made for a lovely day to walk around the pond.

      There is a well-defined path around the pond. It’s maintained and easy for most walkers to navigate. They make you feel like you’re in a cattle chute for much of it, with wire strung on each side of the path to keep wanderers from straying off the path. Signage explains this as erosion control measures. As a hiker of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, I’m all too familiar with the impact of popularity on trails and the surrounding landscape. I stay to the path, liberated from the freedom to wander, I instead focused on the environment around me.

      You can hear the world encroach on you at Walden. Distant highway sounds, construction, sirens, airplanes flying overhead and the commuter train all remind you that you’re in a suburb of Boston. It’s best to acknowledge this, but let it go as Thoreau let the train go as it went past in his time. The landscape is largely preserved, the water clear, awaiting those who would linger.

      When I was younger, there was no visitor center, but there was a bath house. At some point well before I came into this world some well-meaning people decided that the best way to save Walden Pond was to make it a recreation center. So a bath house was built, beach sand extended and you had a destination for family recreation. Thoreau’s cabin is on the opposite shore from the bath house, but it’s the first thing you see when you walk down the visitor parking lot. You’re either at peace with it or not, but it’s relatively benign in the off-season.

      Walden Woods extend well beyond the perimeter of the pond, and we can thank people like Don Henley for their commitment to preservation. Generations of developers find a way to squeeze as much money as they can from resources, and there are plenty of people who would turn the place inside out and up. There’s a place for development in this world, but there ought to be a place for preservation too.

      I’d brought a water bottle with me on the walk, warm day that it was, and decided in a moment of inspiration to fill it with water from Walden Pond. Thoreau drank straight from the pond in his day, I’m not inclined to do that without a filter. Instead, I brought the water with me for another pilgrimage. Just across that highway is the center of Concord, where Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson lived. Just beyond the center is the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, site of Author’s Ridge, where Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott and others are buried. I stopped for a brief visit on Author’s Ridge, told of my visit to his old cabin site, and poured Henry a sip of Walden Pond. Cheers Henry.

      Walden Pond
      A view of the pond just down the hill from Thoreau’s cabin site. This is similar to the view he would have had.
      Pile of stones next to the cabin site. I’m not loving it, but cairns are how people seem to express themselves. The site to me feels like a construction site, cleared and ready to build.
      The cabin site is surrounded by granite pillars to denote the position and size of the cabin.
      Creative cairn art rising out of Walden Pond.

    • Learn to Reawaken

      “The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      How rare is the poetic or divine life today? It’s hard to say. In talking to people, there is a distinct lack of engagement in the workforce. A lack of inspiration for putting yourself into things, no passion for the work, a going through of the motions that must be reconciled. If one in a hundred million souls were sparked by the poetic or divine in Thoreau’s time, I wonder what the ratio is now?

      Do we linger in a post-pandemic stupor? Is it a generational change as the kids raised with iPhones and social media and gaming become the primary fuel that powers economic and cultural life? Is it older generations, churned and manipulated, poked and prodded, finally having enough? Is it the relentlessly obvious climate change impacting everything while seemingly nothing is done about it? It makes you want to sail away sometimes, especially when you see how much fun those who did are having. But there’s inspired work to be done still, and clearly a need for more of us to lift others.

      We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake. We each have purpose in this lifetime that must be fulfilled. To do otherwise is to live in quiet desperation, as Henry would point out. But how do we keep ourselves awake in such a noisy, conflicted and demanding world? He showed the way, didn’t he? Walk away from the noise, find a quiet place to contemplate your place in the world and pay attention to what happens to you. He didn’t travel very far himself (his friends would take the short walk to visit him, and he them). Mostly, solitude is turning off the electronic babysitter and the insistent chatter of the uninspired and listening to yourself. Writing it all down surely helps.

      Thoreau has always been my grounding rod. When I become disenchanted or feel that quiet desperation stirring inside or have simply had enough of the loud talkers in my world I return to Thoreau’s work, or visit his grave, or take a pilgrimage to Walden. He remains a voice of reason in an unreasonable world, speaking universal truths like so many time travelers. Their spark forever awake, forever informing, forever a beacon to light the way even as their physical selves forever rest.

      From where do we derive hope and an infinite expectation of the dawn? Answers are inclined to find us. Don’t let its whisper be drowned out in the noise.

    • Building Upon the Dream

      “Qué lindo es soñar despierto, he says. How lovely it is to dream while you are awake. Dream while you’re awake Andre. Anybody can dream while they’re asleep, but you need to dream all the time, and say your dreams out loud, and believe in them.” — Andre Agassi, quoting Gil Reyes, Open: An Autobiography

      I detected movement in the pool, a light ripple that telegraphed swimming. Walking over to see what was generating the ripple, I saw a mouse treading water while desperately trying to find a way out of the pool. Isn’t it funny that the very thing I might attempt to kill if it were in my home is something I immediately set about rescuing when I found it floundering in deep water? We can’t possibly kill something that so desperately wants to be alive, and go to great lengths to save it.

      But what of our dreams?

      Qué lindo es soñar despierto… How nice it is to daydream. For in dreams we find ourselves. And begin to believe you might just reach them. Which is exactly what Thoreau pointed out to us:

      “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

      Dreaming is the necessary first step, but too many forget to build upon the dream. The foundation is the required next step in the process of getting there. We’ve all neglected this next step a few times in our own lives—for the dreaming is easy, while the building is hard. But build we must to get where we dream of going.

      Have you seen The Secret Life of Walter Mitty? It’s a frustrating, tedious movie when Walter is daydreaming all the time. It becomes compelling when he finally acts. The message is clear: We must wake up from our daydream and act upon it to reach excellence.

      We can’t let our dreams flounder and drown. Act! While there’s still time! For we can’t tread forever.

    • Meaning Abides

      “Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.” — Henry David Thoreau

      “If you want to be happy, be.” – Leo Tolstoy

      “Happiness is transient, but meaning abides.” — James Hollis

      We are all in the process of becoming whatever it is we’ll evolve into next. Blogging documents much of my own becoming, along with a few reckless photos of myself that others insist on releasing into the wild. When you document everything, the documenter captures while seemingly avoiding capture. This is a fools game, everything documented speaks, if we listen and observe closely enough. The trick is to listen closely enough to ourselves.

      The three quotes above naturally clung to each other in the course of a few weeks of reading and writing and sorting out life as it comes to you. We must consider the way in which we spend our lives, for the routines and habits offer a path to meaning and, dare we say, happiness. We are what we repeatedly do, as Aristotle reminds us (For those keeping score that’s four quotes in one relatively brief blog post—just what has gotten into this writer??).

      Perspective, of course. And an inclination to write whatever damned way suits the moment, I suppose. But don’t let me stray too far off the point here. The point is, we must spend our days chipping away at the marble to reveal the secret masterpiece hidden within each of us. Like so many of those unfinished masterpieces you see in museums, we too may run out of time. No, that’s not right—we will certainly run out of time. But we must attempt to draw as much of ourselves out of that cold marble as we possible can before we reach the end of our runway and crash into the abyss.

      We must attempt that which speaks to us. Becoming means to come to a place—what will that place be? Let it be meaningful.

    • Greeted With Joy

      “If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal — that is your success.” — Henry David Thoreau

      I frequently tout the value of each day, going to great lengths to remind myself and anyone who’ll listen to seize it—Carpe diem!. Memento mori! It’s a system for being forever in the moment, maximizing each day as best you can as life throws its curveballs. And it immediately sorts obligations and opportunities into appropriate buckets.

      I’m not always sympathetic when others value perceived obligations over the opportunity to amplify living, but I’ve learned to accept that it isn’t my life but theirs. Still, the question remains, as we begin another day, what will we make of it? We ought to do our best to make it successful, whatever that means to you.

    • Our Lifetime Knowledge Quest

      “Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.” — Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle

      Thoreau’s Life Without Principle is a quick read, but well worth the hour or so it takes to digest it. As with anything in life, the question is, what do we want to prioritize in our brief time? The essay is itself a flash of light that opens the mind to a lot of questions we often push aside. Isn’t that what reading should do for us? Isn’t that what we aspire to in our very best writing?

      “I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day’s devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.…
      Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself- an hypaethral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods?
      … We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention.” — Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle

      Thoreau wrote this for a lecture he gave in 1855, but doesn’t it remain timeless? Why do we dwell on the gossip of our own day and defer the very best ideas for another? Most media is junk food for the mind. We snack way too much on empty calories in our information diet, leaving our souls starving for nutrition.

      We must make knowledge our quest in our short time. If the best way to learn something is to teach it, it follows that we must tackle the deepest ideas in our own writing and conversations too. To participate in the Great Conversation and aspire to enlighten others as we become enlightened ourselves.

      We become what we focus on the most. So it follows, we ought to continue to raise the bar on our own development. To realize a full and rich life, we ought to make our lives a knowledge quest. Each day offers its own wealth to mine. And an opportunity to be a philanthropist with that knowledge.

    • The Ritual Rewards

      “Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.” — Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle

      I’d recently fallen back into a cycle of drinking coffee from a K-cup. There was a lot happening in my life, and it was a fast way to caffeinate. But what I missed in the instant was the ritual of grinding my coffee beans, boiling water and sending bliss through an AeroPress into a favorite mug. Sure, the coffee tastes far better, but the ritual itself also rewards with moments of contemplation. The mind is free to consider what it will, free for a few minutes from the instant gratification of our modern world.

      When we unconsciously work our way through a ritual, the world opens up for us, or maybe it falls away altogether. A space is created in the cadence of the familiar, and in that gap we find our true voice. Think of it as a quiet conversation between friends, but the friends reside between the same set of ears. It’s as essential in our days as brushing our teeth or building something of substance with the tools available to us at this moment in our development.

      Ritual places us on auto-pilot, offering clearly-defined stepping stones in our day that carry us to a place we very much want to arrive at. We’ve all seen what happens to the days that lack ritual: they slip away into lost opportunity. Indeed, we may wonder either way; “Where did the day go?”, but with ritual we’ve at least tackled a few of the things we most needed to to make that day a success.

      At the end of the day, isn’t it fair to ask if our time was productive? And where is our most essential work but on ourselves? Ritual gives us a leg to stand on. We lift ourselves up from the our previous state and get on with the business of becoming. We’re rewarded for the rituals we fold into our lives with the delight in becoming who we’ve wanted to be. And also in those moments of profound richness the ritual itself offers.

    • How Much Alive

      “It matters not where or how far you travel—the farther commonly the worse—but how much alive you are.” — Henry David Thoreau

      Sitting outside, listening to birdsong in the magic hour before the world shook the cobwebs off, I watched a couple of large birds fluttering tree-to-tree. I wondered at them, thinking perhaps pileated woodpeckers who tend to behave this way, or maybe a couple of young turkeys waking up from their roost. Definitely not hawks on the hunt. Black and white with a bit of duck-like appearance to them, I quickly exhausted my list of possibilities and remained mystified. The binoculars and camera remained safely in the house where they offered the least amount of help in the moment. So I quietly thanked them for their visit and released them from my attention as they worked their way away from my own perch. I may find out yet who my visitors were, but it wasn’t our moment for a proper introduction.

      We aren’t meant to know everything, but we ought to be curious. We all seek answers in this world. We climb to high summits, fly to faraway places, seek solace in the new. Shouldn’t we celebrate the world as it comes to us? Why do we feel compelled to fly across the globe? Because we know it’s out there, and like those birds, once we’re aware of that fact we want to know a bit more about it.

      Thoreau traveled too, he just wasn’t collecting frequent flyer miles or navigating security lines. He sought faraway places relative to his time and place, traveling to Cape Cod and Maine and paddling down the Concord and then up the Merrimack Rivers. He sought what was just out of reach just as we do. Credit the pace of travel if you will, but he didn’t postpone his aliveness for when he arrived at his destination, he encountered it in each moment along the way. Shouldn’t we do the same?

    • Wanting Wild

      “I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It’s impossible not to remember wild and want it back.” — Mary Oliver, Green, Green is My Sister’s House

      If we’re lucky, we never really grow up, we just get a bit more creative with our diversions. I used to crave responsibility, now I try to build enough flexibility in my schedule to chase waterfalls. Intense curiosity about the world around us is the key. Life is a quest, after all, adulting be damned. What are we wild things to do but seek adventure where we might find it?

      “In conclusion, it appears that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in distant countries.” ― Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle

      Adventure is easier when you’re on the road. You see things all the time that stir your soul. It’s much harder when you’re working in an office or sheltered in place at home. If we don’t venture out into the world we’ll never find out what we’ve been missing. Charles Darwin found adventure on the other side of the world, Henry David Thoreau found it a short walk from his bed. Adventure isn’t about how far you go, it’s about getting out of your own shell. What is a shell but a prison of our own making?

      Wild is always stirring about inside of us. We must want it back in our lives enough to seek it. The world will always ask for everything we’ve got. We ought to be the wild thing that rebels against that and turns towards adventure instead.