Some Thoughts From Henry David Thoreau

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Since I posted something about Walden Woods and Thoreau yesterday, it seemed appropriate to do the same today as a follow up of sorts.

So, here are some previously published posts regarding Thoreau:

"The world is but a canvass to our imagination."

~ Henry David Thoreau


April 18, 1841  Sunday. We need pine for no office for the sake of a certain culture, for all valuable experience lies in the way of a man’s duty. My necessities of late have compelled me to study Nature as she is related to the farmer, - as she simply satisfies a want of the body. Some interests have got a footing on the earth which I have not made sufficient allowance for. That which built these barns and cleared the land thus had some valor.  We take little steps, and venture small stakes, as if our actions were very fatal and irretrievable. There is no swing to our deeds. But our life is only a retired valley where we rest on our packs awhile. Between us and our end there is room for any delay. It is not a short and easy southern way, but we must go over snowcapped mountains to reach the sun.


April 18, 1852  Day before yesterday I brought home some twigs of that earliest large oval-catkined willow just over Hubbard’s Bridge on the right hand, a male tree. The anthers just beginning to show themselves; not quite so forward as those above the Deacon Hosmer house, which I have thought to be the same. They looked much the worse for the rain. Catkins about one inch long, not being much expanded yet, opening a little below the apex, two stamens to a scale. There are smaller female bushes further on, on the left, catkins about the same size, with greenish ovaries stalked and rather small and slightly reddish stigmas, four-divided. I thought this the other sex of the same tree. There is also the very gray hardwood-like willow at the bars just beyond Hubbard’s Brook, with long, cylindrical, caterpillar-like catkins, which do not yet show their yellow. And, thirdly, opposite the first-named, i. e. the other side the way, a smaller-catkined willow not yet showing its yellow. Fourthly, near the Conantum Swamp, sterile catkins in blossom on a bush willow an inch and a quarter long, more forward than any, but the stamens one to a bract or scale and bifid or trifid or quatrifid toward the top!! Fifthly, what I should think the Salix humilis, i. e. S. Muhlenbergiana, shows its small catkins now, but not yet blossoms.




THIS DATE, FROM HENRY DAVID THOREAU'S JOURNAL "One world at a time . . . "

http://hdt.typepad.com/henrys_blog/2008/04/april-18-1852.html

"The world is but a canvass to our imagination."

~ Henry David Thoreau

Today, many are beginning to challenge the conventional notion of the merits of hard work and no play. Studies show that a lack of play and free time can stunt the healthy growth of a child, which really should not be a surprise. After all, childhood is the time of maximum imagination and wonder, and play is a way of fostering that. Getting in the way of that with some overly grown up notions of the merits of hard work and an overly serious approach to life is, in fact, detrimental to their creativity and mental health.

Now, we even have people questioning this overly serious approach to life for adults, as well.

Indeed, from my stand point, I understand the need for work. But we should work to live, rather than live to work.

Unfortunately, too many people lose sight of that.

Yet, we had someone who has become hugely influential since warn us of the perils of taking life, and particularly work, too seriously.

Indeed, among many other topics that he tackled and helped our American society, and indeed the world, gain valuable perspective in is that of working too hard, and focusing on leisure time, by way of comparison.

Thoreau on Hard Work, the Myth of Productivity, and the True Measure of Meaningful Labor by Maria Popova

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/02/10/thoreau-hard-work-efficiency/