My chum, John Board, wrote, “I have found that the easiest way to get rid of stuff is to move, not a garage sale. When we moved two years ago, thinking stopped; emotions were quenched; and loads and loads of stuff went either to our sons, The Good Samaritan, or the dump. The sad thing is that we need to sort again and get rid of stuff again.”
“Simplify, Simplify, Simplify!” was the dictum of Henry David Thoreau whom I consider one of the finest writers whom America has produced — right up there with Mark Twain. I suppose that Thoreau was a philosophizer, rather than a true philosopher. However, I find his views about society and living a meaningful life insightful. Walden is full of pungent wit, lyrical prose, a deep understanding and appreciation of nature and has the excitement of a quirky enthusiast. I do enjoy quirky people!
He sermonized about American enslavement by possessions: I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle and farming tools . . . How many a poor immortal soul have I met well nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy five feet by forty.
He portrays those who are owned by their possessions, rather than the reverse. “Men have become the tools of their tools.” He describes houses as boxes, saying, “Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box.” He says that respectable citizens teach the young to acquire “superfluous shoes and umbrellas and empty guest chambers for empty guests.” He neatly sums it up by saying, “. . . the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it . . .”
He rebelled by trying to live as cheaply and simply as possible. He scrounged materials and built a 10 by 15 cabin on the banks of Walden Pond. I thought about him when Bill and I were discussing getting rid of some stuff at a garage sale.
Thoreau had the mind of a scientist and kept very accurate records of the details of his experiment in living. This is a list of his possessions at Walden:
My furniture, part of which I made myself and the rest of which cost nothing consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet and a frying pan, a dipper, a wash bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses and a lamp.
Were he to view our possessions, Thoreau would say, “Excess, excess, excess!” Compare this partial list of the things Bill and I own — or is it the reverse? — with Thoreau’s: Silver that has to be polished, a Foreman grill that we no longer use and that no one bought that we replaced with a Gridler in order to make panini, four sets of dishes plus Granny’s plates, Mother’s cranberry plates, sherbets and goblets, a dining table, ten chairs, three desks, two beds and various wooden chests and tables that have to be dusted, a crock pot, sundry pans and skillets, eight chairs and a table in the gazebo, washer, dryer, refrigerator, freezer, glass-top range, dishwasher, riding lawnmower, and two automobiles (all of which have to be maintained) books, pictures, ornaments and doodads, closets of clothing and one of Christmas decorations, computer equipment . . . A total inventory would include hundreds of items. My head is spinning!
Oh dear! I have to dust! sclarke@comcast.net