If Thoreau Were Alive Today

I sometimes wonder what Thoreau would think if he were alive today.

In his day, he didn’t like the railroad because of its noise pollution. “I will not have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing,” he wrote.

Today, silence is hard to come by. There is always a car, a motorcycle, an airplane, a thumping stereo, a barking dog.

The first line of Billy Collins’s poem “Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House” begins thusly:

     The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.
     He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
     that he barks every time they leave the house.
     They must switch him on on their way out.

I like the quiet, as Thoreau did (and as Collins does), but it is harder to come by these days than it ever was in the 1850s.

Can you imagine dropping Thoreau in the middle of 21st Century New York City during rush hour? If the tuberculosis hadn’t gotten him, the shock of modern living might’ve done the trick.

Many of Thoreau’s observations were quite astute. They have just as much application today as they did when he was still living. For example, here are a few bits of wisdom about simplicity I underlined years ago:

On minding one’s own business:

• “…a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

On living free and uncommitted:

• “As long as possible, live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.”

On living a simple life:

• “Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.”

Unfortunately, the IRS makes this last bit of advice difficult to follow. Living a simple life is next to impossible because of government intervention in our lives.

Thoreau was no stranger to government intervention. He was once imprisoned because he withheld taxes in protest of the Mexican War.

I probably spend more time than the average person reflecting on my own life. I ask myself:

• Am I committed to too many things?
• Am I a prisoner to a thousand details that must be attended to?
• Am I so encumbered that I have lost a fundamental element of my freedom?

Hard questions to ask. Harder to answer.

Not that all commitment is bad. Some of the most worthwhile things in this world require great commitment.

But commitment to trivia… commitment to things that are not worth doing… that is a problem.

-Ryan M. Healy