Thoreau, Walden

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived … I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…” (Walden, 1854).

Smoke

“These are the words of the Quester…

‘Smoke, nothing but smoke.’  There’s nothing to anything–its all smoke.  What’s there to show for a lifetime of work, a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone?  One generation goes its way, the next one arrives, but nothing changes–its business as usual for old Planet Earth.  The Sun comes up and the sun goes down, then it does it again, and again–the same old round.  The wind blows south, the wind blows north.  Around and around and around it blows, blowing this way, then that–the whirling, erratic wind.  All the rivers flow into the sea, but the sea never fills up.  The rivers keep flowing to the same old place, and then start all over and do it again.  Everything’s boring, utterly boring–no one can find any meaning in it.  Boring to the eye, boring to the ear.  What was will be again, what happened will happen again.  There’s nothing new on this earth.  Year after year its the same old thing.  Does someone call out, ‘Hey, this is new’?  Don’t get excited–it’s the same old story.  Nobody remembers what happened yesterday.  And the things that will happen tomorrow? Nobody’ll remember them either.  Don’t count on being remembered….

Life’s a corkscrew that can’t be straightened.  A minus that won’t add up.”

Suddenly I See

I just got the call: Becky’s dying.  Even more than before.  The cancer is everywhere now, and the doctor finally told her to get her affairs in order.  She’s bone-thin, she hasn’t been able to eat in a week.  And suddenly, my plans to go up there on Fall Break have been expedited to this weekend, and I’m smothered in guilt over not visiting since Thanksgiving.  I was too busy.  Suddenly school and work and everything else take their rightful place as less important than family.  Suddenly I see this is NOT who I want to be.