On Walden Pond

Among the many reasons I love living in Boston is being in close proximity to so many historic sites. It would be a challenge to walk more than 50 yards in this area without coming across “the oldest such-and-such” or “the first whats-it-called”. Most buildings and parks and trees nearby are old and historic and beautiful even in their dilapidation.

One of my favorite historical places nearby, ten miles outside the city in Concord, is Walden Pond – made famous, of course, by Henry David Thoreau’s 18 month experiment in getting back to nature, documented in the great literary piece “Walden”- one of my very favorite books.

It’s message is simplicity. Contentment with rich surroundings rather than rich possessions is a daily struggle when living in a land of plenty. Certainly, I don’t like to think of myself as particularly materialistic, but it takes a lot of awareness all of the time to nip it in the bud as the impulses insidiously begin to creep up. There is always stuff that I want and just because my list doesn’t include a Louis Vuitton hand-bag or a new BMW doesn’t mean it is not filled with many useless frivolities.

As I prepare to exit the years of my life marked by poverty and student-debt accumulation and enter a time of reaping what’s been sown, I’ve begun to think a lot about how best spend (or not spend) the money I’ll soon be making. The best I can come up with so far is that discretionary income (all else after tithing and saving and charitable contributions and student loan payments) ought to be used for experiences before things. Thoreau himself said, “wealth is the ability to fully experience life”.

Next year, until who knows when, I’ll be working dreadfully long hours not just for the sadistic thrill of it but in order to garner some rewards for my life through financial solvency. Such rewards might be, I can only hope, to travel the world, whether is be to far-off, exotic places or simply to see old friends and family wherever they are, to nosh upon sumptuous feasts and sample fine wines, and to make memories on which no price could ever be placed. If I must work to live, that is fine by me. So long as I don’t wake up one dreary morning to find that I’ve begun living simply to work.

Caveat: there is one frivolous, somewhat materialistic promise that I made to myself years and years ago, that I do intend to keep despite the silliness and expense. My very favorite lady-clothes store in the whole wide world is Anthropologie. Their wares seem so effortlessly chic and classy but always with a hint of whimsy, which in a wild, perfect alternate universe is how I dream someone might also describe me. This Anthropologie-je ne sais quoi does not come cheap, as evidenced by the fact that I have never owned a single thing from the store. As a motivational promise to myself that my hard work would literally, not just intellectually, pay off one day, I declared that my first, big splurge with my first, big post-law-school pay check would be a dress from Anthropologie. And come this fall, if all goes as planned, it shall be so. Yes, it will be expensive and slightly ridiculous but I am a keeper of promises. And, I do believe, the promises we make to ourselves are often the most important of all.

Some recent shots (& a few Thoreau thoughts) from Walden Pond:

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”

“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

“Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of nature and has his senses still.”

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.”

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”

And finally, in conclusion: “A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.” Go read “Walden”, if its managed to pass you by. Now I must be off to commence living on its hint.