My Tribute to Thoreau
There was a period in my life that I was inspired by the writings of Henry David Thoreau And although I know I risk being criticized for unoriginality, I would like to once again look back at some of the words Thoreau used that especially inspired me. Those words and my own ending comment (after my own Walden experience) follow:
“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. 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.” (Henry David Thoreau, An American Writer of Spirit, 1854)
Life is Sublime. (Indy Boswell, An American Writer of Spirit, 2008)