I've been listening to Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, at long last. It's one of those famous books that you hear about forever, with all the great quotes. Since I'm a fan of Emerson's writing (see highly modified opinion in later blog here), and the two are associated, and because I like the quotes from Walden, I have at last decided to give it a shot. I'm only a third of the way through, and I am both disappointed and inspired by it.
I suppose I was expecting something in the vein of Emerson's enlightened thoughts, but Thoreau is certainly his own fellow.
He's a young man, only 30, and he seems even younger than that, in ways. I envision a college student—one of those really idealistic ones who want to live in a tent and experience nature, full of zeal and rebellion. Thoreau actually says something to the effect that he's never received any good advice from his elders. So ungrateful, I thought! So, yep, he seems a bit spoiled and bratty that way. He later says that his constitution is not designed to be a philanthropist, which is sort of funny. I think he had been frustrated with wanting to help people in the truest way he knew how—and had been rejected. They wanted gifts, whereas he wanted to help them to be self-sufficient in the way he had accustomed himself to being. In a way, I identified with him there, as I think of gifts like compost bins or other self or home-improvements.
So, the great Thoreau is an interesting and inspiring person, but he's immature in ways that reflect his place in life. He's young and headstrong, with no dependents. I wonder if he changed some of his views in the ensuing years? I hope he at least changed his mind about the unimportance of proper nutrition, though his diet actually didn't sound too awful—but most certainly he cannot just eat nails and survive. Yes, he said something like that.
Anyhow, he delves deeply at times, resonating with me for a short while. He's all about finding the least expensive way of living so that the vast majority of your time can be spent on what you are interested in. He drones on and on, itemizing his expenses for us--in such a classic text! But it does convey his passion for the reality of his beliefs—that he not only thinks he can do this, but he is doing it!
That was nice mostly as a sorta 'Me, too! I see it that way!', but it's nothing that I didn't already kinda know. And I'm not so sure about the complete validity of his itemizing as 'proof' that anyone can do this, as he's 'squatting' on someone else's land!
He did comfort and inspire me a bit with his recommendation to spend less time 'do(ing) good' and more time trying to 'be good'. I like to fancy that I share this truly broad-minded perspective. He sees the pointlessness of so much cyclical charity. In his time, the rich factory owners were impoverishing workers and then alleviating the poverty at times with charity. It would have been better if they'd just 'been good' in the first place.
In our own time, so many charities are designed to support the pharmaceutical industry. As if they need our money! We volunteer to pay for research to develop new drugs. Sigh… So many people put much of their best energy into this, donating to these rich conglomerates.
If the kindly folks who are donating would put more energy into 'being good'—as in, don't harm others (including factory farm animals) or the environment and try to support family businesses—then they'd actually be doing a lot more for the health of the planet and their own communities.
Not to dissuade people from donating to charity. That does have its place. But even donations to some of the charities that do the best work can go awry—as when I simultaneously donated to an animal rights group and to an environmental group only to discover that one group was fighting legislation that would promote animal testing, while the other group was pushing for it, so as to more thoroughly test chemicals in household products.
I figure that the best use of my limited income is to make sure that my own life is as ethical as I can make it. Meanwhile, I do see the value of group action, given our governmental concerns. And I do still donate to charity, a little. I just want to prioritize making ethical choices at home, as Thoreau encourages. I could always do better, and I sometimes feel guilty about my choices, but we do at least have some good patterns established, such as shopping at the farmers market and prioritizing organic foods.
Thoreau goes farther. I'm not willing to explore the 'freedom' of his lifestyle, as it sounds too uncomfortable and uncertain, but I share his perspective to a degree. And, in contrasting the minimalist lifestyle that he leads with my own, I feel as though I am blessed with so much already. I don't think it was his intention, but his book is making me appreciate what I have. His warning, though, is one that I live with—he doesn't want us to indebt ourselves unnecessarily, making us slaves to possessions. What's that quote that prompted me to get the book in the first place? Something to do with 'the cost of something is how much of our lives we exchange for it'. Yes, I think that's a valuable way to consider everything, including things that are 'free'.
And while he was talking about real sweat-and-tears labor, I'd also like to point out that television counts here, too. The cost of television is not just the cable bill and the TV set and little bit of electricity—it's the hours upon hours that we spend watching it instead of engaging ourselves in the activities that we're most interested in. We can become passive and waste our lives in this way, if we're not careful. Not to say that we might not sometimes be very interested in a particular show—and sometimes there are wonderfully informative shows that are right up the alley of what we want to learn. My husband and I spend quite a bit of our free time watching documentaries, and I reserve action and fantasy entertainment mostly for my workouts on the elliptical—at which time I also like to employ the foreign language subtitles (or English subtitles while listening to Spanish or French). I'm not sure if I learn much new from this, but I hope that it keeps me from forgetting some of what I already know. Hah, I feel a bit like Thoreau, itemizing his expenses for us! My point is just that I'm not throwing out the TV altogether; I may even overindulge and am guilty of devoting too much time to it, too. I try to excuse it with my workouts, some language practice, documentary information, and DVDs instead of cable, so as to eliminate most advertising (a waste of time as well as materialistic propaganda!). Could I do better? Perhaps. I could be more extreme, like Thoreau. And it might not be a bad idea. But I am a product of this society and find myself unwilling to go to that extreme.
Even so, I appreciate Thoreau's ideas and enjoy listening to them. Who knows? Perhaps he's planted a seed for later. At the very least, he has prompted me to appreciate what I already have and to feel that my life is actually pretty darn luxurious.
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