July 12, 2017 marks two hundred years since the birth of Henry David Thoreau. As an essayist, philosopher, protestor, and transcendentalist, to name just a few attributes, he is an enduring figure in the American literary pantheon. Best known for his book Walden, which extolled the virtues of lifestyle simplicity, and his Civil Disobedience essay, which called on individuals of conscience to resist unjust government, Thoreau's ideas and influence burn brightly in the hearts and minds of every American secondary school English teacher, and by extension, in the existential ennui and soul searching angst of every teenaged would-be poet and wanna-be folksinger.
Thoreau's famous lines echo Arnold's eternal note of sadness and the long, melancholy withdrawing roar:
I went to 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. -- Walden
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. – Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
Add a dash of John Donne, a pinch of Franz Kafka, and a teaspoon of Poe. Stir vigorously with a stock of Shakespeare and you have a witch's brew of coming of age uncertainty and self-doubt. What does it all mean? Why am I here? What does my future hold?
The thoughtful of every new generation taste this bitter soup, seeking answers to the timeless questions. I certainly did, and my struggle was by no means unique or even unusual.
As a small town boy in Arkansas, I craved intellectual and emotional certainty. The former, I found in books, which opened a world of science and technology, of art and music, of poetry and philosophy, in a place where those were rare. The latter – emotional maturity – I learned, comes only with life experiences and time, for learning and knowledge, however deep, are not understanding.
As a boy, fishing with my grandfather taught me the essential truth of Thoreau's observation, "Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." Sometimes my grandfather and I caught fish, but both of us knew that was not why we went repeatedly to the pond. Together, young and old, we sought and found something much more important, in the shared conversations, in the fading memories of a life lived, and in the ill-formed dreams of a life yet formed.
Thoreau expressed some essential and eternal truths, sometimes rendered banal by over-repetition, ones all too often lost in the hubbub of living. On Thoreau's 200th birthday, it is worth remembering just a few:
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.
Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.
Resist unnecessary conformity; seize opportunity; pursue your dreams; heed the distant drummer; live your own life. Therein lie the answers to those teenaged questions, and a life well lived.
As Kierkegaard said, "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
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