It is a little-known fact that I used to live near, and love, Concord, Massachusetts. I still love Concord, home of so much history and so many authors, but I no longer live twenty minutes away.
One of my favorite places to visit was Walden Pond. You may recall Walden Pond as the place where writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau lived in a tiny house for two years. He went in an effort to live simply and to cut out all distractions. He also wrote a book while he was out there. It wasn’t Walden that he wrote while living on by the shores of the pond, but that’s the book that I picked up again recently. I’d love to share some of my favorite passages:
On small living:
“I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one.”
“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When the visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another.”
On food:
“One farmer says to me, ‘you cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;’ and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle.”
On stepping back from society’s expectations:
“Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe…. I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing… as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched.”
On work:
“This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.”
If you’re interested, you can read Walden online or listen to a free audio version, both via Project Gutenberg. I highly recommend it if you’re interested in voluntary simplicity, minimalism, or nature.
__________________________________________________________
©2010 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where the beach at Walden Pond is also beautiful, but difficult to photograph. First image courtesy of pablo.sanchez. Second image courtesy of Chris Devers. Third image courtesy of Merelymel13.
No comments:
Post a Comment