DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From Social Nonconformist to World Renowned Philosopher and Writer

Imagine This: Although you are Harvard educated, you decide at the age of twenty-seven, to build a small house with your own hands in the woods where you can study nature and not get caught up in the materialistic pressures of the world around you. Your aim is not to escape civilization but to simplify it. At the time, people criticize your simple way of life, but you have always been an independent thinker, and you continue to live your own life the way you want to.

 You’re born near Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817, the third of four children. Your father is a shopkeeper, but by the time you’re born, his business is failing and your family is very poor even by the standards of 1817.

 While your father is quiet and studious, your mother is friendly, outgoing, and has a generous heart. She always finds a way to help those poorer than herself and welcomes everyone into your home. She is also known to speak her mind on the social and political issues of the day, particularly on such subjects as slavery to which she is strongly opposed.

 You enjoy growing up in Concord where you can spend your time outdoors enjoying nature. You enter Harvard at sixteen where you’re deeply influenced by writers such as Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

 You graduate from Harvard in 1837, but you’re not a particularly outstanding student because of your independent ways. After your graduation, you return to Concord and begin recording your thoughts and experiences in a journal.

 In the fall of 1838, you and your brother John open a private school which becomes very successful, but you have to close the school in 1841 when your brother becomes ill and can no longer teach.

 You have always loved living a simple life, away from the intense pressures of a competitive society. You champion the independence of the human spirit over materialism and social conformity.

 There is a pond near Concord named Walden, and this is one of your favorite places to just sit and think. In your late twenties, you build a little house on one of Walden’s shores where you can be alone. Your house is very simple and has only one room, one table, a bed, and three chairs.

 Nature is like a living being to you and you want to do more than just enjoy its beauty. You want to get so close to it that you become one with it. One entire morning, you lay on your stomach and watch a war between red and black ants.

 By living at Walden, you want to prove to yourself and to other people that someone can live very, very simply. Living so simply frees you to do what you really want to do: to see, to learn, to think, and to write.

 Your most famous book Walden is published in 1854, but it is not recognized as one of the great American classics of nonfiction until after your death. It has never gone out of print and it has appeared in more than 150 different editions, often selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies.

 Despite the emphasis in Walden on solitude, you’re not a hermit. You have many friends including the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Your friends are important to you and you once write that “Friends are kind to each other’s dreams.”

 When you die on May 6, 1862, at age forty-four from tuberculosis, Concord loses its most distinguished son and the nation loses a man and writer unique in any age.

 But that is not the end of your story. After your death, you achieve an eminent place as one of the most influential writers in the world and influence national leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King, Jr., in America.

 “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”

                                       Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XP2T1FMtnA

 Giving Back: Thoreau believed that he could best help others by encouraging them to “simplify” their lives.

 Did You Know that when Thoreau graduated from Harvard, he did not think it was worth it to pay the $5.00 fee to receive his diploma, so he left without a diploma?

 Something to Think about: What do you think about Thoreau’s statement that he felt many people live lives of “quiet desperation?”

 Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week’s true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!