Reflections from Walden Pond

To future adventures.

I've not gone out for much excitement(for what approaches excitement in my life) lately, instead it has had to come to me.  As much as the temporary jolts of adrenaline can be considered an adventure.  But driving the equivalent of New York to LA and back every month rather quiets any desire I might have to travel in the short term on my days off.  Besides that, many of my friends are busy in their own lives, so travel companions are difficult to find.  Already drive alone five nights a week, and have no desire to do so on the weekends as well.

For the last several months of my resumed employment, I have been listening to audio books during my long car rides to fill some of the emptiness. Well at least on the way out.  Often on the way back I listen to music or just sit in the silence and let my mind grind away on the question of the day.  When the drudgery is neither dangerous and depressing it descends into a deep dull.  How's that for alliteration?  But I've complained about it enough about it in the past.

So far since January my listening list is as follows:  The Wheel of Time, all 13 books.  Then some of Mark Twain's travel journals.  Caesar's Legion.  I made a vain attempt at Descartes' Dissertation on Reason(this did not go well as most of it seemed to be the author talking about himself.  More than that, at least one of the readers sounded terrible).  Now I'm returning again to Walden.  The mood struck me so.

Walden.  My English teacher in my Junior year of high school was obsessed with the book and its author.  We spent an eternity wrapped up in four or five weeks working through the rambling work of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emmerson.  I hated it, as my love of reading involved mostly science fiction and fantasy novels.

Many years, and one boring job that I hated later, and I decided to give Walden another chance.  This time though, I would go with the audio version as I worked that boring job that I so hated.  Have you heard of librivox?  Got to Librivox, they are awesome.

That was in 2009.  The first half of the book tickled me greatly and I revered the man's words.  The last half, well he just wanders about in no particular direction.  Some of his stops are interesting, whilst the rest I could easily skip.

For those of you who have never heard of the book, it consists of the naturalist Henry David Thoreau's rambling narrative about his two years of experience in the woods.  Back in the 1840s he built a small shack on the shore of Walden Pond in Massachusetts and lived a rather care-free life.

Were he alive today, Walden would effectively be HDT's blog, as he writes about everything that crosses his mind.  From his observations of the natural world down to his views and thoughts about the nature of what the nature is of living a good life.  Some of his thoughts and words resonate deeply with me, while others are just nattering opinions. Still, you take what you wish from the giant soup of human thought as you mix together your own sustenance and leave the rest to burn or rot.

I wonder if this blog will be my Walden.  I suppose I could work to make it so.  If I manage some deeper thoughts.  But how has HDT affected my own thinking.  How have his thoughts struck me?  Here are a few quotes that I quite enjoy.

1) As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

*To my thinking, this is a reminded of how much time we spend waiting for life.  I don't know if that was what he had intended with the statement as this brilliant line jumped out at me as the surrounding context faded back into the bushes.  I answer with “I do not wish to kill time, but embrace her.  Alas she slips away so quickly.”

I try to fill my days with as much meaningful work as possible.  Usually I fail as I am tempted away by funny cat videos.  It has been a week or more since I last picked up my zombie novel, or any other story.  As it is, I am squandering my existence with the struggle to survive.

2) Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something

3) I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

* As an introvert and a hermit, this one rings very true for me.  I spend about 22 in every 24 hours in a given work day in near complete solitude.  But there's a difference.  I have a phone and the internet.  If I wish to connect with someone I always can.  Loneliness is easy enough to stave off in that fashion.  What I wish is for more meaningful human contact.  As it is many of my good and interesting friends are far off.  As an introvert with a touch of social anxiety, it is difficult(read this as near-impossible) to refill those ranks, leaving a hole in my life. It does not help that I am very picky in the people with whom I wish to associate.

Glorious solitude though, and the bent of freedom that in bestows.  My thoughts are my own as is how I spend my time.  HDT also has a quote on that thought that I shall do my best to paraphrase:  A man who travels with a companion must wait for the companion before he may leave.  A man who travels alone is his own master.

Regardless, we all need companions, even a hermit.

4) Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, aye, to life itself than this incessant business

5) The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it

*This quote is ingrained in my bones, and has been for a number of years.  I often ask myself whether the object or experience is worth the hours of labor that it took me to get that money to pay for it.  Often the answer is no and I rightly move on.  Others, the answer is still no, but I ignore my gut and fork over a piece of my life for that shiny whistle(to mix analogies and bring Ben Franklin into the conversation).

The man is quotable and he gifted humanity with hundreds of such nuggets of gold.

I've so far in my life been content to be a grunt and work for my daily bread.  No thinking in my job, just simple monkey work.  My jobs are usually just a series of tasks, where I have few responsibilities.  This is really all I trust myself to do.  I fear the possibility that I'll be given a task that I am not equal to and be overwhelmed.  Call this an insecurity in my own skills.  I little understand the big picture in many endeavors of business or finance and the like.

I really hate the idea of being forced to focus on a task that doesn't really interest me.  I just wish to explore the world at my own rate and pick my own direction.  As Tolkien said, Not all who wander are lost.  Is this laziness?  I've completed some seven novels, two dozen short stories and a play.  They are not brilliant masterworks that will inspire future generations for centuries to come.  But they were fun and they are mine and I trust myself to accomplish that much.

Previously I was not bothered much by doing grunt work in low end jobs.  They allowed me my free time.  But then my co-worker has been talking about his life.  He lives in a trailer with his wife and three kids and has worked odd jobs all his life.  He seems happy enough and content, but I don't feel that I wish to follow that route.  But at the same time, I really don't have a mind for business.

Should I like to have a wife and kids?  I think that would be an excellent adventure in itself.  Life would be interesting.  Or maybe the wife and freedom from the duties of offspring.  Whichever.  Both seem to me fascinating possibilities.  After all, I've already experienced being alone.  Let's see what the universe brings.

There is another failing, waiting on the universe and fate.  It is half of why I play the lotto on occasion.  Waiting for Fortuna's kiss.  But the bitch ain't a'comin.

For now, I have simple dreams that seem to be out of my reach.

To be continued.