Thoreau #2, or Respecting What is Inevitable

For those who don’t know, shame on you. Also, for those who don’t know, I will give Mr. Thoreau a brief introduction before launching into his grand insights into the meaning of life.

Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817 and died in 1862, both having occurred in Concord, Massachusetts. It seems only fitting, then, that his foray into the wilderness should have taken him no more than a few miles from home to the shores of Walden Pond, a glaciated kettle lake with no waterway flowing into or out of the lake. Though he constructed his own cabin in the woods surrounding Walden Pond in 1845 and lived alone whilst he remained there, he was by no means friendless or a hermit. For Thoreau, "wilderness" was more a state of mind than it was a physical location. 

The very land on which he planted his roots was owned by his good friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. This is commemorated in the modern-day park by the Emerson-Thoreau Amble which can be hiked around the western side of the park, near where Thoreau’s cabin once stood. As an aside, for those wishing to learn more about Thoreau’s influences, take a gander at Self-Reliance by the inimitable Mr. Emerson.

Thoreau would end up spending two years, two months, and two days living on the shores of Walden Pond, after which he produced that most famous work of his, Walden; or, Life in the Woods. In the post below and in the posts that follow, I will take you through the quotes from said book that resonated most with me; quotes that reveal not only the fruits of self-discovery that Thoreau enjoyed living in the woods, but also his insights into humanity and why life is worth living.

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"If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality."

I forewent reprinting Thoreau’s opening lines here for two reasons: firstly, because we have already examined them lightly in the introduction; secondly, because they are merely a mission statement, though an eloquently crafted one. Those opening sentences merely inform us of why Thoreau did what he did. The quote above and the quotes to follow will deal more with what he found once he was in the woods.

So, where to begin? Before moving into discussion of music and poetry – yes, I know, everyone loves poetry – I want to unpack what Thoreau means by those things that are "inevitable" in life. And while they, too, seem inevitable, he is not talking about taxes. I cannot rule out that he may be talking about death, though, if only tangentially. But I’ll come back to that.

He is, first and foremost, addressing those things that demand our respect. Things that are beautiful, lasting, moving, and profound. As the character Sean O’Connell says in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, adapted from the short story by James Thurber, “Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.”  And yet we give them our attention anyway, precisely because of their beauty. In the film, Sean is talking about the magnificently graceful, powerful snow leopard while on location to try to photograph one. This is not the superficial, surface level beauty of a glamor model; rather, it is the beauty of Venus, shining pale yellow in the night sky, a true model of beauty. This is the beauty recognized in a well-crafted sentence, or the beauty of a fine painting. Not a painting that is priceless because some famous artist of the past happened to have painted it; rather, a painting that bores into your soul when you look upon it, that causes you to ask questions about life, that draws forth your emotions and makes you ask “Why?” 

When you break it all down, things that are "inevitable" – in the sense that Thoreau is talking about – are the things that matter. And what truly matters to humanity is surprisingly constant through the ages. True, we must satisfy our physical needs through proper sustenance, hydration, and care; this is unchanging. These are practical matters driven by practical needs. Things that matter to us, those that are driven by our values and morals, are similarly unchanging. 

Humans value our relationships with other humans. This is inevitable. It is also beautiful. Short of artificially constructing a setup in which you live in complete isolation, a feat in which the practical act of survival would be difficult enough, every person on this planet will have consistent interactions with other human beings at varying levels. Thoreau would have known this fact better than most. While he managed to make a go of it largely living off the work of his own hands for a couple of years in the countryside, by his own account he made semi-regular trips to town to socialize and also received frequent visitors to his humble cabin. 

While Thoreau certainly may have been familiar with loneliness and boredom (the man dedicates several pages of his memoir to describing the working habits of ants), isolation would have remained a foreign concept to him, and as I said before, to any of us. To get a better picture of isolation, one would have to look to the exploits of Dick Proenneke, a former carpenter who retired to the Alaskan wilderness and spent 30 years living alone in a cabin of his own construction. Even so, it is a stretch to think that Proenneke lived in complete isolation.

When the Twin Lakes area where Proenneke had constructed his cabin was designated as Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, Proenneke quickly became a favorite among the park staff as well as with park visitors. Though he likely spent his winters in near isolation in the harsh Alaskan wilderness, it is clear that Proenneke had occasional visitors during the warmer seasons. Visitors appreciated Proenneke, as evidenced by the number of publications in which people describe their interactions with him, and it seems natural to conclude that Proenneke likewise cherished these relationships and interactions. 

Proenneke passed away in 2003, having left Alaska five years previously to live out his remaining years with his brother. I am extrapolating here, but Proenneke, like Thoreau, likely saw the inevitability of death not as something to be feared, but as something to prepare for. Proenneke left his beloved wilderness in order to live out his years alongside his brother, opting for the meaning that such relationships provided over the inherent contentment he undoubtedly felt in the woods. The wilderness would pass away, inevitably, as all things do, and perhaps Proenneke knew this. Perhaps he felt he was better suited for the next phase of life by the serenity found through relationships, rather than by desperately clinging to a solitary existence in the wilderness.

Human interaction and mutual reliance, in one form or another, is inevitable, and is, in fact, a form of music and poetry. The clamor, the worries, the busyness of everyday life, these are the things Thoreau cautions as “but the shadow of reality.” Nevertheless, when one steps back and takes a moment to breathe it all in, to see the big picture, one can appreciate the beauty of all of humanity interacting together in this great game of life. It becomes “but the shadow of reality” only once we have chosen to focus our attention on these things that trip us up. 

These hang ups will inevitably come, but being able to hear and appreciate the music and poetry of life is simply a matter of focus. Will you choose to focus on the irritants, the externals that you cannot control? Or will you simply deal with those as you must, choosing instead not to lose sight of the beauty inherent in all of life’s aspects? Will you listen for God’s voice, the voice of the Universe? It is only when we are, as Thoreau says, “unhurried and wise,” that we can listen properly.

Let’s envision a scenario. You are an engineer, headed to a bid meeting with a client to meet with contractors looking to bid on a construction job. As the engineer, you have developed a plan for the project, carefully designed over many hours to the constraints imposed by the project schedule and budget. Upon arrival, the contractors quickly propose an alternative option to your design. The client, quickly forgetting budget limitations, is taken with the idea and hops on board with the contractors, leaving you to defend the path that you took and explain why you seemingly overlooked this other alternative. 

Being conscientious, you attempt to explain why you did not design according to the contractors’ admittedly good suggestion without placing blame on the client for the inadequate budget. It is not advisable to place blame on the client, even if that’s exactly where it belongs. Instead, you explain that the plan proposed by the contractors would require extensive rework on the existing infrastructure in order to make the plan work, hoping that the budget implications are clear to all present. Apparently, they are not. 

The contractors continue arguing for the alternate option, the client won’t make a decision on the spot, and you are left to try to convince the room at large that the original plan is still the best option, but to no avail. The project gets tabled and is never built. You are now out many hours of design time, careful thought, and planning for a project that will never come to fruition, and have just been thrown under the bus by your client. How will you respond?

Option A, the petty fears option, would have you obsess over how you could have approached the project differently, of how you could have convinced the others in the room of the adequacy of your design. You would go back to your hotel room and aimlessly wonder how things could have gone better, and worry fruitlessly over potential ramifications back in the office. Option B, the unhurried and wise option – the deliberate option – reminds you that the only thing that you can control is your reaction to the situation. Certainly, you can learn from it. Certainly, you can be better prepared the next time around. Certainly, you should not let it ruin your month, week, or even your day. 

Do not let such concerns linger. The worries of our daily lives pass more quickly than the sands of time, and yet we tend to let them dominate our thoughts. Let the shadows pass unheeded, and instead focus on those permanent and beautiful things, those things that make our whole existence worthwhile. 

Thoreau #1, or An Introduction to Meaning

https://www.walden.org/what-we-do/library/thoreau/

It's about time we came round to the patron saint behind the idea of Deliberately Aimless: Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was a man who ambled through town, the woods, over hill and over dale, for hours at a time, in search of space to think and freedom to commune with nature. Fortunately for us, he put many of his thoughts to paper, and we can thus dive in and examine them in detail through a series of posts, and see what Mr. Thoreau has to teach us.

I started this series because I wished to think critically, to ponder not only but especially the difficult questions, and see if I could not develop a sound philosophy, and not, when all was done, discover that I had never been tested.

You may well recognize the structure of the above sentence. It is, of course, based on the opening statement made by Thoreau in his profound memoir Walden; or, Life in the Woods. The original reads thus:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

What Thoreau was searching for in the 1845 woods of Massachusetts is the same thing that many of us are still searching for today. That is to say, he was searching for meaning. Now there are various themes that will surround the word “meaning,” naturally charged as it is. Several of these include purpose, self-reliance, relationships – no, those two are not contradictory – achievement, wisdom. The list goes on and will likely vary from person to person. This series won't be a panacea for finding meaning in your life. 

Now a logical primer question would be to ask whether Thoreau in fact found meaning during his sojourn in the woods. That is a question that only Thoreau himself is capable of answering, but he does so throughout the course of Walden. In the posts that will follow in the coming weeks, I will demonstrate the ways in which Thoreau found meaning in his life, with special emphasis on some of the themes mentioned above. This exercise necessarily involves a lot of my own interpretation. Let's call it viewing Thoreau through a deistic lens.

Thoreau certainly experienced self-reliance, in the form of growing his own food and building his own cabin to live in. That much is obvious. And while some contend that his stay in the woods was far from isolated, in part because of his semi-frequent visitors and the railroad than ran within a half-mile of his cabin, I will contend that that is immaterial. Thoreau did not attempt to hide the fact that he regularly made visits to town nor that he had visitors. And regardless, the presence of others certainly does not diminish the meaning which he was seeking, it undoubtedly enhanced it. 

In this blog series, all kidding aside, I do hope to demonstrate the elements of a meaningful life through an examination of the life philosophies from but one of history’s great thinkers. My approach will be to present and evaluate direct quotes from Walden; or, Life in the Woods. From these quotes, I will weave a narrative, the common threads being philosophy, character, principle, and reverence, key ingredients of a meaningful life.

By no means is this intended to be a recipe, whereby you can follow a set of steps and live a fulfilled life. It is merely meant to be an examination of the prevailing life philosophy of Thoreau, an illustration of a life well lived. Though actions speak loudest, words are important, too. Whether or not Thoreau was always true to the standards and ethics that he espoused is not the point. The point lies in striving to reach those standards, in developing a sound moral philosophy and attempting to maintain it, while all around us the world tries to force us into a misstep or to fit the typical mold.

Finally, I also hope to demonstrate that philosophy, transcendentalism, and deep thought don’t have to be boring. Increasingly it seems that the world has less time for matters of substance, preferring instead to be entertained, looking always for the trivial, the summary, the path of least resistance. Indeed, perhaps our lives have become too easy, lacking tangible danger, self-exertion, even strong emotion. There’s no need to take the path less traveled because the path of least resistance is just so darn easy; why would we need to deviate from it, let alone want to?

Life is easy. You may well scoff at that statement and think I am off my rocker. Let me explain. When I say that life is easy, I’m talking about the general day to day necessities of life. In order to remain alive, all that is required of us really is to provide our bodies with sustenance, usually gotten from the money we’ve earned at a job. This job, distinguished or otherwise, likely requires only that we clear certain hurdles and maintain a median level of competence and effort. If a job begins to demand too much of us, fairly or not, we can get another one. Beyond sustenance and income, we need sleep in order to recharge our bodies and minds. Sleep is generally free and easy to come by. And there you have it, life is easy in our modern world.

But that’s not the type of life I want to talk about. Maintaining your life, staying alive, may be easy enough, but actually living may be less so. These days, all too often when in conversation with friends I find myself quoting from movies or referencing television shows, as though having watched them is the most relatable thing that I’ve done recently. It makes me sad. Not that having some baseline level of knowledge of popular culture is itself a bad thing; rather, that these are the things we choose to talk about. Once again we err on the side of the trivial rather than seeking true depth. 

Now I’m biased in that I have a love for the outdoors, hence a blog series based on quotes from a hermit transcendentalist, but that should not make my high regard for the restorative powers of nature any less legitimate. Nature, in my own limited experience, is the one place where we can feel truly alive. 

When you stand in the desert and feel the sand pelting your bare legs as it is driven by the perpetual afternoon wind; when the driving rain forces you to pack up your book and race from the lakeside to seek shelter in a park outhouse, before continuing on through mosquito infested portages to where you had parked; when you watch the sun cast its warm morning glow against the limestone bluffs from a kayak, and pray that your eyesight is never taken from you lest you miss the beauty of creation, only to return later in the day with a peeling sunburn; when you return from a January trail run and can’t feel your fingers for the next half hour, but head out the next day to do it all over again; these are the things that humble us, but don’t debase us. In some cases, nature brings us to our knees; it brings us to our most basic relationship: that of an organism valiantly, or so we’d hope, making its way in the world. We are base, but not humiliated.

There is an important distinction between humility and humiliation. I will present the case that humility is the key to a life well lived. This does not mean, however, that we become overly passive. A vigorous life and a humble life are not at odds. Again, base, but not debased. With that in mind, the posts in weeks to come will dive into Mr. Thoreau's philosophy, our resident transcendentalist guide.