OPINION
Social distancing 101 with Henry David Thoreau
🍃“We are not grateful enough that we have lived part of our lives before these evil days came” 🍃
New York, 1843. A row of stark buildings, crowded streets full of smoke. Catching a brief respite by ducking into the entrance of his new home, he looks up. Imagining the sea breeze, trying to hold on to that image of a muskrat swimming in a pool of water he glimpsed by chance whilst taking in the sights of Staten Island before the day, inevitably has to begin…
Henry David Thoreau, the quintessential poet-hermit and icon of American transcendentalist literature, spent a short time in his life living in New York City, tutoring the nephews of his mentor and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Missing his picturesque old haunt at Concord, he later wrote to Emerson that he “wanted a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence that Wall Street could not buy”, seeing as he was a man “made of Concord dust”.
It’s notable that for him, a continent was his little nook near Walden Pond rather than the breadth and space of the vast land mass we’ve come to associate with the word today.
With the outbreak of Covid-19 preying on our minds and flight warnings still being issued out, continent hopping seems nigh impossible. Just yesterday, I stumbled on the front page of a magazine, detailing the most attractive tourist hot spots within Austria for locals to explore this summer. A lot of the imagery featured beautiful mountain ranges, lush green forests and glittering caves -prospects Thoreau would have enjoyed immensely, given his propensity for taking long, rambling walks in nature.
While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me
His nature writing is full of poignant as well as romantic observations on the everyday beauty that surrounds us throughout the seasons, ranging from the stark reality of a blackthorn hedge to the Aeolian music that is a summer storm. Immersing oneself into his descriptions is akin to re-discovering the world we live in on a day to day basis.
And there is much to learn for the modern traveller- how many of us, after all, could claim to know the genus of a bird we encountered? In fact, did you know that trees can feel and talk to each other? That crickets, each one distinct, create a music that would challenge the greatest orchestra, vivid for its individuality? Just stepping out of our front door can be a vast adventure for those with eyes to see and ears to hear if we are only willing to open our eyes and explore.
Drifting in a sultry day on the sluggish waters of the pond, I almost cease to live and begin to be
The beneficial effects of walking through the woods on a regular basis are well-documented, with forest-bathing or shinrin-yoku now being in vogue in the western world as well. A dose of basking in the shade of trees releases a can help lower blood pressure,grants a reprieve from daily stress as well as rejuvenate mind and body. With bars, cinemas and theatres either closed or circumspect under current conditions and binge-watching on Netflix loosing its appeal after being cooped inside for so long, the time just lends itself to dust off those hiking shoes and go for a leisurely walk, even to the nearest park. Take your camera with you and try to capture the way the light hits the green-speckled canopy or take a basket full of choice eatables with you to enjoy on the springy turf. Maybe bring a copy of Walden with you in order to properly sample the natural delights on offer? The choices are endless once you set your mind on expanding your horizon.
What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? Not my or thy great-grandfather’s but our great-grandmother Nature’s universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness
Despite these options available to us, many of us are disconcerted by the standstill of public life-outside of our social circle, recreational pursuits and the dizzying plethora of public life, we are forced to slow down and confront ourselves. It’s a valuable pursuit, as any yogi or spiritual master or any retiree with a bucket list can tell you but not easy by a wide shot. Thoreau himself, who proudly declared that he walked alone, had lost a great deal in his life before he could adopt his zen-like state of life. The death of a brother, the loss of the love of a woman and the end of any professional prospects with regards to his writing as well as potential teaching career had to be slogged through first.For all that, his writing channels a sense of freedom, self-sufficiency but, most of all, determined self-confidence that has nothing to do with the roles and demands society imposes upon us but everything to do with what we choose to be apart from society’s dictates.
I love nature partly because she is not man but a retreat from him. […] He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this. None of the joys she supplies is subject to his rules and definitions.
We thumb through self-help bestsellers, talking about how “we’re worth it”, finding ways to be “kinder to oneself”, running the gamut from experimental Yoga to detox smoothies full of the next Superberry but rarely do we admit to ourselves that these are a patch job at best-they don’t fight the problem at the source, after all. Because, at the end of the day, we still follow the same itineraries from 9 to 7, jumping the next step on the career ladder in order to get that picture perfect life we’ve been told is the end all and be all of our existence.
The pandemic is forcing us to hit the brakes in our social life, something to be regarded as an opportunity to confront ourselves and really get the gist of what our lives truly mean outside the spectre of conventionality. Thoreau and later Robin Williams in “Dead Poets Society” term it “sucking the marrow out of life” yet it doesn’t have to go that far. Just taking a time-out and enjoying not doing anything for a while can be healing in and of itself.
We live too fast and coarsely, just as we eat too fast, and do not know the true savor of food […] How much, what infinite leisure it requires, as of a lifetime, to appreciate a single phenomenon!
All this about finding oneself does not require one to be a solitary recluse. For all that Thoreau is synonymous with said expression, he frequented the town, ran into Irish families around the Concord and was in exchange with a plethora of people who came to swim or hunt at Walden.
It means being appreciative of all that we have, amidst our current troubles. Living in a country that has a stable welfare and health system, with the privilege to buy and consume everything we need and provide for those that we love is no small thing yet we never stoop to consider even the cogs that make the system run (hello, essential workers pay gap?) as efficiently as it does.
We are not grateful enough that we have lived part of our lives before these evil days came
Instead, many of us are mired in fear. Hiding behind our masks, face shields and hand sanitizers, we are building small bastions of protection-anything to stay clear of the virus. Sadly, that means edging away from people on the street, glaring for good measure when someone gets inconceivably too close to us or hitting said people with sticks for violating supposed safety guidelines (I can vouch for that one!). The new normal is fraught with tension and not of a good kind. The only ones having a laugh are the children who pretend they are invisible when wearing masks to the chagrin of their parents chasing them along side streets. It’s actually sad, and, in some ways, pathetic.Sure, safety first but at what cost?
Thoreau is clear in that people of all ages, whether old or young, strong or weak, male or female are constantly preoccupied by the shadow of death or illness.
The amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die
But life means encountering, and, finally, mastering that fear. We know this instinctively yet the novel nature of the threat we are facing has made us forget that for an instant. And, maybe having the support structure that are our extended friends and family fall away at this crucial moment can make us feel even more despondent, yet even that can be a chance to “stand within oneself to become an impenetrable shield”
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other
In fact, the essayist and philosopher is clear on the fact that we are often alone without noticing it. When we are thinking or working, we are by default alone, wherever we are. Admiring the beauty of a sunset sky or experiencing something truly sublime, these are moments that make up for precious individual memories rather than are part of a shared social consciousness.Being apart from others can be an incubator of sorts to focus on what truly matters in life.
For Thoreau, nature served as a form of communicating consciousness in his quest to be more receptive towards outward influences. He expressed that sentiment when defending his way of life, stating that “the theme is nothing, the life is everything. All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited”.
And he truly did live-it was at Walden that he got the notion to refuse to pay his taxes in order to protest a slave-driving government and it was there that his first literary efforts took fruit. By endeavouring to stand alone, as a naturalist writer and moral philosopher but mostly as a fellow human being, he embodied the spirit of our current, pandemic driven time-showing solidarity in aloofness in order to strengthen his mind and actions.
What a hero one can be without moving a finger!
Let us not, therefore, resign ourselves to enforced practices of solitude or follow the fashionable trend of meditation but resolve to live in a way that recognizes the fact that the heaven we search for has always been within our grasp, Covid-19 or not, seeing as “there is neither good nor evil but thinking makes it so”.
I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, every-day phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbours, may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me
Sources
Quotes purposed from Thoreau’s journals and Walden
