Who are we to judge the quiet desperation of strangers? And how can we assume that we know them at a glance? We don't, not unless the glance is one of those special soul-searching eye-locking glances that can scare the shit out of you. Maybe Henry David Thoreau was a whole lot wiser than I am (well, ok, that's kind of true), but I don't think is was right for him to judge the quiet masses as a whole. Most men (and women, obviously) lead lives that would surprise us if we saw them from the window of a coffee shop, full of ups and downs, full of untold stories that would burn the air with their intensity. I know I do.
"When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear." Advice from Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), in Chapter 1, Economy, of Walden. Thoreau was a Transcendalist writer who moved to Walden Pond, Massachusetts on July 4, 1845, and lived there for two years and two months. He explains why in the following passage from Walden: "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."
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation..." - Henry David Thoreau
Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is. - German Proverb
Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty. - Stephen King
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