That's the clear takeaway in the opening pages to the "Economy" section of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. After introducing the concept of his experiment and inviting readers to take away the principles that suit them best, Thoreau points his authorial finger at his readers and warns that they're killing themselves in pursuit of society's bullshit expectations of the shape of well-lived lives:
"[You're] making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day" (p. 262).But all this striving, striving, striving is nothing but a collective nightmare that Thoreau's desperately trying to wake us up to escape. The messages in this opening, then, are clear: Draw your own conclusions, and direct the course of your life through deliberate choices:
"The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation" (p 263).
"It appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living, because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose slear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof" (p. 264).
"What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate" (p 263).
"We are made to exaggerate he importance of what work we do; and yethos much is not done by us! ... So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one center" (p. 267).
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