One hundred and seventy-two years ago, the civilly-disobedient writer/naturalist/philosopher Henry David Thoreau did something super weird: he went to the woods around Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts to live like a hobo. Alright, alright, he wasn’t really a hobo; he built himself a cabin in the woods, a replica of which is still there today. But he did give up a cushy place within comfortable society in order to perform a thought experiment. His experiment was this:

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, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.¹ (66)

Most of the people in town thought he was completely bonkers. Some people today take his experiment to mean that Thoreau was an antisocial escapist. While he did spend a larger chunk of time conversing with trees and bean fields than most folks, he wasn’t antisocial. He writes at length in the chapter “Visitor” about human acquaintances of his, speculating upon the qualities he appreciates and finds irksome amongst his neighbors. He had dinner only a mile from his cabin with his buddy (and owner of the land his cabin was built upon) Ralph Waldo Emmerson nearly every week. He was even known to throw dinner parties of up to 25 people in that one-room cabin. He lived close enough to town to hear the church bells, and to sweet-talk his mom into doing his laundry. The woods around Walden Pond were even inhabited by other people. I had often imagined Thoreau out there in complete solitude, but the truth is that those woods had a history as a sort of ghetto. Amongst his neighbors in the woods were ostensibly freed slaves whose freedom didn’t extend beyond the borders of Concord and also the disenfranchised minority dujour, the Irish. Thoreau didn’t eschew people; he chose to live amongst those that his society didn’t want to see. His experiment was to eschew willful ignorance and confront the business of discerning life head-on:

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. (65)

Thoreau’s experiment was to really live his life. He wanted to live intentionally and not be distracted from what it is to be alive or “to live what was not life.” He wanted to experience what it was to be alive before he died and could “discover that [he] had not lived.” He wanted the true essence of life, whether it was shabby (“mean”) or glorious (“sublime”). His hypothesis was that most people intrinsically do whatever they can to shy away from experiencing life, buffering themselves from Truth with comfort and distraction. He wrote:

“Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” (14)

If his neighbors generally thought him odd, he returned the favor in kind:

“Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have.” (29)

Houses, possessions, the attainment of a comfortable life; to Thoreau’s mind, these things were all distractions from the true essence of what it is to be alive. The people he saw were more concerned with assimilating with each other than experiencing their own lives. As Thoreau observed his society, he saw folly in the rat race of acquisition:

The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. (8)

If his neighbors thought his austere, self-reliant way of life strange, he saw the extent to which they went to distract themselves not only misguided, but foolish and exhausting:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation…A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. (10)

I’ve always loved that last line: it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. I Googled the definition of the word wisdom: the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment. At the bottom of the definition, there’s a graph showing the popularity of use for the word wisdom in a corpus of books; it’s alarming and perhaps telling to see the precipitous drop in usage for the word wisdom from Thoreau’s time to ours. As creatures that are capable of wisdom, of self-awareness, why would we desperately shove those precious gifts away? Because it’s easier? Thoreau argued that it was not, that ignorance took herculean effort to maintain. Do we shove because life/wisdom/self-awareness is terrifying? Probably. What is it that we’re so afraid of? Is it being alone? In this day and age, it’s easy to avoid being alone. We carry super powers in our pockets that we can turn on like a force-field to keep the threat of loneliness from touching us. I know people that sleep with the television on because the light and noise simulate the presence of people, distracting them from the work of connecting with the actual people they live with. I see people in public that whip out a cell phone at the first hint of having to stand by themselves and wait a moment at the bus stop or checkout line. I see teenagers learning that spending time together equals sitting next to each other while they disappear into an electronic device. It is so easy to distract ourselves from life, to chase down the next news story or snippet of entertainment. It’s easy to disconnect ourselves from each other.

When I first read Walden, I was head-over-heels infatuated with Thoreau and the idea of heading to the woods to repeat his experiment. I craved being alone because I often found other people scary or intimidating. I still do. The idea of talking to trees and squirrels, of gardening my own food, and drinking tea and reading books sounds like utopia to me. But when I examine that pull in me, the utopia crumbles because the truth is that an existence like that would be a cop-out for someone like me. It would be my own version of a quietly desperate life. Thoreau went to the woods seeking solitude to figure out what living his best life would look like; he needed to cut away the distractions to understand what was Life and what was Not Life. Today, we’re still dealing with the things that hindered Thoreau. But we’ve managed to complicate things even more by disengaging from each other. We protect ourselves inside bubbles and at best, we allow our bubbles to cluster together. At worst, we’re vaguely aware that other bubbles do exist, but we don’t wonder at those bubbles and the humanity they contain. Worse, we don’t even trouble ourselves to try.

What if we try our own version of Thoreau’s experiment? While I'm all for talking to squirrels and plants, we don’t need to be as extreme as Thoreau was. If he went to the woods “to front only the essential facts of life, and see if [he] could not learn what it had to teach”, perhaps our modern equivalent could be simply putting our devices down and actually encountering the people around us. The idea of completely eschewing our phones and other devices is as completely bananas to us today as Thoreau’s experiment was to his contemporaries. But we don’t even need to go that far; we don’t have to eschew our devices completely. This iteration of Thoreau’s experiment could be difficult, but even Thoreau gave himself breaks. We could start small if we need to. What if we choose once a day—even for a minute—to resist the urge to pick up our phones and disconnect from each other? Thank someone for even the smallest kindness. Look someone in the eye and ask how their day was—then listen to the answer. Ask the people you live with about their high and low for the day—again, listen to the answer. Challenge yourself once a day to make contact with another human, no matter how briefly. Let’s reach out as gently as we can and touch the other bubbles floating around us. Let’s listen to the people inhabiting those bubbles—to only listen, which can be incredibly difficult when we’re out of practice—and learn what they might teach us. We don’t have to agree with nor even like every bubble we meet. But if we can begin to encounter each other in a spirit of empathy, or at least sympathy, we will have a far better chance “to get the whole and genuine meanness of [life]…or if it were sublime, to know it by experience.” We might be surprised if we make the conscious endeavor to corral the bubbles blowing around us—they might even start to pop. And then can go about the work of experiencing the unquestionable ability to elevate our lives.

Notes:

Photo: “Walden Pond from Thoreau Cabin Site” by Miguel Vieira is licensed under CC BY 2.0

1. Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. New York: Signet Classic, 1980.