My Walden Years
Somewhere between the ages of 10 and 13, I remember imaging what life would be like when I became an adult. My ethos, in a word, was minimalist. I would live in the house I grow up in. (My parents rented it out for a year or two after we moved, so it was reasonable to talk of me one day owning it). In that house I would own almost nothing. In my vision, I didn’t have furniture, just a rug where I would meditate. I would inherit my father’s landscaping business and live for contemplation. Most importantly, I felt, I would not own a t.v.
This is my earliest memory of thinking I would not own a television, though I am sure reading Fahrenheit 451 and the profound impact it had on me played a big part. Nonetheless, years later, it shocked my parents when years later I moved out of their house and I didn’t bring a television. They hadn’t listened to me all the times I said I wouldn’t have t.v. My actions got to speak more loudly than my words. I had begun my Walden years.
It’s incredible to think there was at time I had to struggle to make myself read Henry David Thoreau’s classic Walden. In a way it is a blessing that I had lived through some of my own radical experiments in living before I read it, however. In this way I got to see the world with my own eyes, and then know when I came to Thoreau that I had found a kindred spirit. It is so much more important to find a better way to live than to find something you can say you like in public. As Thoreau and I both found, simplifying your life is it’s own reward.
The first 6 months of my time alone I didn’t even have the internet. You might imagine it would be a time of cranking out a bunch of work, but I don’t remember it as particularly productive time. I remember it as peaceful. I’m a fairly private person, so I didn’t have as many “are you crazy” conversations as you might have thought when I started out, but I do remember one time explaining to a particularly dubious person that I would listen to the radio to “create enough noise,” if I had to, it but really never happened. I learned to live in silence. I caught up on my sleep, and I listened to myself think.
During this time I took up wine tasting to see if there was anything to all the fuss, and found there really wasn’t. But I still have a lovely memory of a beautiful spring day, laying on my couch, listening to the breeze, sipping a Merlot, and reading Nietzsche. I read incredibly slowly, stopping to think often, and the birds sand their lovely songs. It’s hard to improve on a moment like that, even with a meditation mat (something which I did not and do not own, my pre-teen vision notwithstanding).
Though being unplugged from the world of instant information was an interesting and worthwhile experience, at some point I got an internet connection. Perhaps this piece should be entitled “My Walden Months,” or “My Walden Half-Year.”
Thoreau’s own time at Walden Pond ended after 2 years, and my time had to end as well. Now that I am married, we have a television, but I’d like to believe that the gravitational pull of my unconventional ways is responsible for the fact that my wife and I only watch it around 2 hours a week, though my wife does watch movies on it in addition to that.
From Walden and some of Thoreau’s other writings, I have completely lost my earlier notion, more of a prejudice, that Thoreau was a “phony.” Instead, I see his time at Walden as a stand he had to take, one that put him on a firm footing for the rest of his life.
I see my time when I lived alone the same way.
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