Walden Thoughts (Instead of Class)

“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves…I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains...” -- Conclusion, Walden

One of the things I love most about Walden in particular (and Thoreau's work in general) is that each new reading brings revelatory understandings and connections; it is never the same work that I pull from the bookshelf. When I first read Walden in my mid-teens, the sections about the flaws in standardized education versus true learning were what caught my eye. When I read Walden in my mid-twenties, I was absorbed by Thoreau's deliberate savoring of the moment and the messy social constructs that constitute human experience. When reading Walden this last time, it was the forward thinking manifesto hidden in the conclusion that held my attention.

With very few exceptions, it seems to me that complacency is something most people struggle with. We either become mired in the safe and expected, or we struggle with a lack of reliability and security; we become our routines or we struggle against them. For me . Seven years ago, I decided to quit my job and leave school (packing up all my belongings, finding a new home for my cat and turning off my phone), instead taking a risk and accepting an opportunity to move to Northern Ireland. My erstwhile father had suddenly and unexpectedly passed away the year before at the age of 48, so thoughts of unrealized opportunities and ignored potential were strong in my thoughts. I remember telling my mother that I was leaving

I sometimes find myself standing in front of the mirror in the mornings, brushing my hair and meeting my own eyes in the glass...on days like that I am thinking about myself and my life; where I've been and where I'm going...the things I've done and what I have to show for those experiences...and it often occurs to me that I have somehow