Leadingchurch.com

Lives of Quiet Desperation

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. 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.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden (pp. 5-6). . Kindle Edition.

There is hardly a more American passage than this from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. This is such a famous passage many hear it and identify with it immediately.

When you find a quotation that people will hear it and nod their heads with it it’s often helpful to expand it a bit and see what came next in the passage.

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden (p. 6). . Kindle Edition.

We could jump forward 150 years and hear nearly the same words out of Steve Job’s mouth at his famous commencement address at Stanford University.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

There are so many ironies in Job’s and Thoreau’s admonitions. They council us to examine everything, take nothing for granted, forget the advice of older generations and be the judges of our own truth. Do they except themselves from this? By this date Jobs and Thoreau would long be considered old and dead.

Job’s too in this speech talks a bit about his fight with cancer in rather happy terms because in 2005 when he gave this speech he thought it was under control. It was in fact not under control and because he didn’t listen to his doctors when they discovered this rare treatable form or pancreatic cancer his listening to his own inner voice would cost him his life.

Yet with all of this these statements are part of our cultural canon. In movies, novels, books, stories, commencement addresses this anti-dogma dogma is proclaimed and celebrated. It is deep within us that we must liberate ourselves from the dogmas and practices of tradition so that our inner passion, out true selves can emerge to express and become what we truly are. To say this in many context today, especially among the young would be to preach to the choir. This is their creed, their ethos, their religion.

The Desperation of Hannah Continue reading →