Seeing what this global pandemic has done already to our social lives, our work lives, and our economy, my perspective on life has shifted a bit in the past two weeks. I re-read a passage in the book that stuck out to me the first time. This time, it felt even more on point.
I went into 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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion…
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion… The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldly and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain…
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?
While Thoreau chose to live alone and distanced from others and we are being forced to do the same out of necessity, he seems to have come to some of the same conclusions that I have in a much shorter time.
Most of us live at such a fast pace with a “thousand-and-one” things to do. We live too fast and we cannot keep up. Maybe it helps us feel important. Or needed. Maybe it helps us to avoid feeling things like loneliness. What’s ironic for me, though, is that, because I keep myself so busy all of the time, I don’t always find time to maintain the things that should be important and meaningful: friendships, connecting with family, learning something new, pursuing a passion.
The last few weeks have forced us to slow down. My calendar has been cleared and, as Thoreau encouraged, I can count things I need to do on my ten fingers. There is no question that this time is hard and the source of much suffering. Our world will be different because of this. People are losing loved ones and livelihoods. Our global economy has shrunk. It’s not always easy to find the silver lining. In this case, if nothing else, perhaps we will all start to slow down, discover what is really important, and live more deliberately.
In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely.
-Henry David Thoreau
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