Henry David Thoreau

The first time you hear Thoreau quoted is usually when you are young and impressionable. This is not surprising since he lived just shy of 45 years and wrote many of his best works while young and impressionable himself.

I read and re-read Thoreau beginning at about the age of 25. He was in his late thirties when he completed writing his seminal work, Walden. In it he tells the story of his time living in solitude on a piece of land owned by his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord, Massachusetts. Perusing his epic now I can hear in his words the wonder and impatience of youth. His questioning of societal attitudes and what it means to be alive provides me with guideposts even to this day. Gandhi and Martin Luther King credit Thoreau for helping them formulate their ideas on non-violent activism.

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Yes, step to the beat which you hear. Life is too short to act in any other manner.