Walden; a review

"Birds do not sing in caves"

As more and more of us are being told to return to nature as a way to cure modern ailments^[1], it becomes clear that we didn't really listen to Henry David Thoreau in the last two centuries. A young man of just twenty-seven, Thoreau ventured on a journey to escape the hedonic treadmill that suffocated those around him in materialism, wanting and displeasure.

Nowadays, people like to hold up Thoreau as a guide for us to live a life of solitude and primitivism^[2]. Of these ideals, criticisms abound, especially accusations that someone else did his laundry during his asceticism (you can read all of these things here, here or here).

I interpreted Walden differently. Thoreau, in my opinion, preaches a different way of viewing the world:

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of.

Thoreau here seems set on challenging the definition of "success" that has insidiously crept into our modern identity. Perhaps because much of our world today has been influenced by the rise of the United States, the issues Thoreau identified during the infancy of the nation have now spread like a disease.

If you don't see eye to eye with me though, Walden also inspires us to bask in the beauty of nature, because, in addition to being a philosopher, Thoreau was also a poet. Keep an open mind when exploring the banality of Thoreau's day-to-day subsistence and the serenity of the icy pond, that there is an incredible depth of living that one can experience from the simplest of circumstances.