Walden by Henry David Thoreau
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
Walden—a book published around 1854, is a striking account of the time that Henry D. Thoreau lived alone in a secluded cabin at Walden Pond. It is one of the most influential and compelling books in American literature.
I’ve read Walden twice.
Not that I had an affinity for it, but mainly because I felt guilty for skipping too many sections of bean-growing and some of the drier chapters during the first read.
The more I read Walden, the more I realize this wasn’t a social criticism but a personal confession. Thoreau stated that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”, meaning that most people might appear to be perfectly fine on the outside, but internally are intensely desperate for some spark, some meaning or some depth to their lives.
The author himself is a transcendentalist who believed that the government and organized religions have corrupted the purity of individuals. Contrary to the public’s erroneous impression of Thoreau, his experiment to live on his own was not to become a complete back-to-nature hermit, but more so as a philosophical experiment. In the cultivation of the unfettered self, Thoreau believed he was getting closer to the philosophical core of existence.
Thoreau’s fervant rejection of conventionality is created for social misfits who hear a different drummer. His transcendental sentences encouraged people who had trouble of making sense of the dogmatic order of the society.
So getting into the content of the book.
This book is divided into various sections. Some meaningful, some not really. (Unless you’re fond of ants observation and bean growing.) Yet all sections were written with great sincerity.
The section on solitude is probably my favorite. He mentioned that, people meet up for meals so regularly, that they don’t live enough life in between meeting up with each other. As a result, they don’t really have anything meaningful or value-adding to talk about.
Keep in mind that, Thoreau wrote this book in 1854. Can you imagine his response if he knew how our generation keep in touch with people nowadays? How regularly we check in with every single thing that we’re doing on social media. To be honest, we don’t really live any life in between conversations.
Well, Thoreau, you don’t get life. Our generation had it all figured out:
Life is essentially about memes, hashtags, brunch, cold brew coffee, bee-stung lips, selfies and booties. Should probably update that definition onto the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
In all seriousness, this book has some inspiring ideas, yet I wouldn’t say the reading experience itself was all pleasant. Some of the sections are really dry and dull. Yet overall, I do not regret having read Walden. There were moving, potent, and memorable words. There were values that have also been mentioned by other people, but only to be found believable when Thoreau said it—for the brimming passion and sincerity in his writing.
