Once again, WALDEN

Henry David Thoreau's Walden is one of those books that seems almost magical: every time I pick it up, I find something different in it... and, more than that, whenever I pick it up and open it to what seems like a randomly selected page, I always find exactly what I need at that particular moment.

Right now, I'm working through a string of days without a break: when Labor Day comes, I will have worked 24 straight days without a whole day off at either job. But then from September 2 through 8, I'll be off. Call it "earning my vacation."

I haven't had a great deal of spare time and energy lately, and unfortunately sometimes I don't use the time and energy I have in the best ways I could... which just makes me feel MORE tired and stressed and annoyed with myself.

This, plus an email from a friend in which she vented about her work ("i like to say [the economy] doesn't get to me but i see it has affected sales, my job is harder, more frustrating... on this beautiful day i just need/would love to tidy the house and be mindless but deadlines press in on me") got me running to Walden, so to speak, to find a pithy, appropos Thoreau quote. I was looking for his quote on how to make "making a living poetic," because if it is not poetic, then it is not a LIVING we make. Etc etc.

So I opened up my old Modern Library edition of Walden to the section "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," and this is the passage that jumped out at me:

"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 even 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. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few items beautiful; but it is far more glorious to be able to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour."

Just what I needed to read, when I needed to read it. I also sent it to my friend.

So, from two of us, once again: thanks, Henry!