To live deliberately

I read Walden some time ago. One of those books that many people know about and not so many have read. And it is not what those who have not read it think it is. When I'd finished it, I was really not sure what message or import it had for me. There is a lot in it about simplicity, self-reliance, progress, spiritual awakening, meditation, patience. It is described in Wikipedia as part memoir, part spiritual quest. I noted also that, though the impression is given of manly self sufficiency, and he did indeed do a great deal for himself, he did not lack for company or for help during his two years at Walden.

Perhaps its most indicative sentence is "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 think the key word there is "deliberately", and it is freighted with a great deal of meaning.

If I wanted to recreate Walden, I would have nowhere to go. There is nowhere away from civilisation here, no wilderness (in effect, there was not for Thoreau either, although many have gained that impression). So I began to think in terms of how to do Walden in the present day. Do you actually have to go there, to separate yourself physically?

And while I was thinking that, I was listening to Nightwish, who refer to Walden more than once in their album Endless Forms Most Beautiful, in particular in Alpenglow. "Building a Walden of our own" and then very simply asserting "We were here". The phrase "we were here" reappears exultantly at the end of The Greatest Show On Earth, a celebration of evolution.

Linking "we were here" to Walden is simple. We don't have to go somewhere to be simple, progressive, awake, meditative, patient, to live deliberately. We can do it right here.