‘Thoughts from Walden Pond’: Bible for the Renaissance Man

This Week’s Winner - Francis Rex Alger is 31 years old. He is a freelance writer.

No one said it better than Franz Kafka: "We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."

Thoughts that one gets from books are nourishment to the curious mind. Books undoubtedly make the spirit soar. However, can anyone live by them alone? That is what Henry David Thoreau seemed to preach during his lifetime but he didn’t have a successful life, that is, if success is based on accumulated material wealth or acquired prestigious positions.

In fact, there wasn’t any radical idea in Thoughts from Walden Pond, which is the book the American writer is most remembered for. However, there’s no denying that Thoreau’s two-year residence in Walden Pond was his most momentous moment. Not long ago, I voraciously read classical novels. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s writings may be hypnotic, Jane Austen’s observations biting but amusing, and Jules Verne’s adventures out of this world, but none of them or any other works touched my nerve the way Walden did.

Living with Mother Nature is a perfect setting for contemplation and it’s at Walden Pond where Thoreau bares his mind and soul. Individuality is one of the striking images of America and his essays show that Thoreau is the poster boy for it. However, what is most remarkable about the book is it reminds us that our world is vast and just waiting to be explored, that our existence is short and it shouldn’t be spent mostly in daily routines, and life should be relished no matter how easy or difficult it is.

Thoreau suggests many ways to that enlightened path: solitude ("The value of man is not in his skin, that we should touch him."); the lack of commitment ("There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon"); simplicity ("If all men were to live as simply as I did, thieving and robbery would be unknown"); purity ("Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them"); and an innovative spirit ("Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought").

The most essential of all though is through reading and Thoreau is more particular on the old ones ("For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?") and making it a daily habit like eating and drinking ("To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem"). What other way can free us from the chains of ignorance and make us more tolerant?

Walden is among the few classics that I first read and Thoreau was so inspiring that it’s like he invited me to his realm to meet his other distinguished peers. The book made me discover the wonders of writing, the curious sensations one feels during traveling and that knowledge being the only valuable thing in life. However, what’s more important is each one of us wants to leave a mark, which is proof of a worthwhile existence.

As he lucidly states, "Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Practical minds would look at Thoreau’s ideas with near contempt, as they look out of sync with our present, fast-paced world. Moreover, they look more suitable to the young, as security becomes more important when one gets older. Yet no matter how much sense is countered against the idealism of Walden, there is sparkling light in Thoreau’s gospel.

I remember reading an article not long ago about an Alaskan dog musher named Norman Vaughan who took 65 years, more than a million dollars, one failed attempt that resulted in a plane crash and the lives of his four favorite sled dogs, to reach a peak in Antarctica named after him by polar explorer Admiral Richard Byrd. He celebrated his 89th birthday on his way to the top and when asked if he had any message to the world, his response was "Dream big and dare to fail." I wondered if he read Walden, such that Thoreau’s spirit made him obsessed about the summit during all those decades.

If Thoreau ever wondered if he indeed left a mark, I’m sure he’s smiling somewhere up there because Walden became the bible of the Renaissance Man and it existed long before Chicken Soup for the Soul came along. As he simply puts it, "With wisdom we shall learn liberality."