Monday, January 8, 2007

Content with Our Course

Thoreau's Journal--January 6, 1857
A man asked me the other night whether such and such persons were not as happy as anybody, being conscious, as I perceived, of such unhappiness himself and not aspiring to much more than an animal content. “Why!” said I, speaking to his condition, “the stones are happy. Concord River is happy, and I am happy too. When I took up a fragment of a walnut-shell this morning, I saw by its very grain and composition, the form and color, etc., that it was made for happiness. The most brutish and inanimate objects that are made suggest an everlasting and thorough satisfaction; they are the homes of content. Wood, earth, mould, etc., exist for joy. Do you think that Concord River would have continued to flow these millions of years by Clamshell Hill and round Hunt’s Island, if it had not been happy,—if it had been miserable in its channel, tired of existence, and cursing its maker and the hour that it sprang?”

Thoreau held that human beings were created to be as happy and content as all the rest of nature--if we would only follow our own nature! We too often mistake who we are. Our desires, impulses and ambitions send us off on so many "rabbit chases", seeking one identity or another which will be approved by those who see us. We too often define ourselves by social perception, rather than by the nature which is our self. What a gift to look at a walnut shell and see its true and only grain and patterns. What a gift to watch a river find its course without error or disappointment. We don't say of a river or a tree, "Oh, if only it had done this or that, things would have turned out so much better!" Maybe we should allow ourselves and our neighbors some of the same openness simply to be and to become without barriers or expectations.
We might say to ourselves, "Oh, so this is who I am today, as I walk, as I listen, as I work." I am a river, a wood, a walnut shell.... I am a child of God: "Do not be anxious about your life...Strive first for the kingdom of God..." (Matthew 5:25 and 33).