What does Walden Pond tell us?

In 1833, Thoreau was admitted to Harvard University and became a student in the School of Liberal Arts. He published a few essays when he had nothing to do, but he just did it for fun and didn\’t take it seriously. There is an electronic version for download at the end of the article! He has read a lot of books, but he does not want to follow the old path that has been taken by his predecessors. Rather than arranging a path for life like most people, he prefers to live casually. The most promising thing Thoreau did in his life was to go home and open a private school with his brother after graduation. However, this was shattered when his brother became ill. After that, he made pencils in his father\’s pencil factory. Improve and create a very advanced pencil. The technology is unprecedented, and you can definitely make a lot of money. However, Thoreau did not apply for a patent, nor did he step up manufacturing to make money, because he felt that doing one thing repeatedly can make money. It\’s really boring. He began to travel around (wandering), working while seeing the world, and worked as a gardener and a surveyor. During the trip, he would write down any feelings he had and send them to magazines to earn some living expenses and complete the essay collection \”Walden Pond\”. In \”Walden\”, Thoreau clarified a phenomenon: many people seem to be working hard to live and find freedom, but they are not looking for it in themselves, but through external materials. They think that with money, they can find freedom. With more material, you can be free. These people pursue and pursue. They have a little money but are not yet free. They feel that more money can lead to freedom. Having enough material to live is not enough. They feel that they need more and more beautiful material to be happy. They have not found freedom and have no When you see equality, you only see endless pursuit. In terms of material money, people cannot find freedom or equality. The truly free person is not the person with the most material things, but the person with the richest and calmest heart. In 1845, when most people were pursuing money and material things, Thoreau gave up all this and pursued the truth of life. With a few dollars earned from odd jobs in his pocket and a borrowed axe, he went to a pine forest and cut down some white pine trees. From the place where he cut the trees, he looked into the distance and saw Walden Pond. Beautiful views as far as the eye can see. On the way back from work, skylarks sang in the sky. For a long time, he felled trees, felled wood, and cut pillars, all with an ax in his hand. In the winter, I cut down trees to prepare materials. In the spring, the house already had an empty shelf. Then I spent a few dollars to buy some second-hand wooden boards and started to decorate the house. In this way, Thoreau built his house slowly and personally, without panic or laziness. After the house was built, Thoreau made a list. It cost a total of 28.115 yuan to build the house, which was equivalent to the annual rent of a college student. It can be seen that the cost is not high, it can even be said to be very low, because this house will belong to him forever, and students at Harvard and Cambridge College rent a cabin for 30 yuan per year, which is about the same size as the cabin Thoreau built himself. Thoreau discovered that it is not difficult to own a residence of one\’s own. As long as people are willing, most people can easily own it. However, in reality, many people, while paying expensive rent outside, complain that life is difficult and that life is not easy.. Is life difficult? Isn\’t life easy? If you want to say it\’s difficult, if you want to say it\’s not easy, it\’s really hard, really not easy, and it\’s never been easy, except for the time when I was a kid when I didn\’t have to take responsibility for myself. But life is difficult because people themselves make it difficult. Why? Because our hearts are too complicated, and the life we ​​want is too complicated. On July 4, 1845, the American Independence Day, the whole country rejoiced, and Thoreau officially moved into his cabin. When he decided to build the cabin, he declared: \”I want to go to the forest because I want to live a real life. I want to live fully, absorb the essence of life, and abandon everything that has nothing to do with life. When I die, I will not realize that I have lived in vain.\” The hut was built, and real life began. Simple, self-sufficient and practical. For us, the easiest question to think about is, what should we do if we live in the mountains? Thoreau gave us the answer after practice. He wanted to earn 10 yuan in an honest and comfortable way to meet the extra expenses of life, so he planted two and a half acres of broad beans, potatoes, corn, peas and radishes near the house. We also found a piece of land to plant pine and pecan trees. In the first year, deducting various expenses, Thoreau earned 8.72 yuan. In the second year, he plowed all the land, and the harvest was better and the income was more. Thoreau also calculated how much he ate. In eight months, he ate $8.74 worth of food. All in all, Thoreau found that not only had he survived, but he had also earned a house that would always be his. In the United States in the nineteenth century, Thoreau was surrounded by a group of people who pursued money and material things. People wanted to gain freedom in life by accumulating more material things, but Thoreau said: There is no real freedom in material things. Some people work hard to make money in order to be looked up to and for the so-called \”equality\”, because only when they are as rich as rich people can life be equal, otherwise they will feel inferior in their hearts. But Thoreau said: You can never find it in material things. equality. In the material world, if there is more, there must be less; if there is wealth, there must be poverty; if there is good, there will naturally be bad; if there is fashion, there will naturally be obsolescence. Comparing each other, there will always be someone who is superior or inferior. No matter where you stand, there are always people who are better than you and people who are worse than you. In terms of material, life is impermanent and is dominated by material. And those who have inner freedom, even if their material life is a little poorer, are always the emperors of their own lives. In fact, what is complicated is not life, but the heart. What is difficult is not life, but the image of life that arises in our hearts. What is real life like? What exactly is needed? Through his own practice, Thoreau concluded that there are very few things necessary for human beings. “Under the existing climate conditions, the necessities of life are food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. And each of these substances can be used completely. Some simpler and more direct ways to get it.\” Food, clothing, housing, transportation, undressing when it\’s hot, and lighting a fire in winter are life. But why is our life so difficult? The answer is because of desire, vanity and fear. The world in which people live has a dazzling array of objects and all kinds of things.Sexy people want to have what others have, so cars, houses, food, and travel have all become \”standard equipment\” and synonymous with a certain kind of life. Of course, these are also needs, but needs actually contain a lot of human greed, vanity, and fear. Because of greed, we want more. Because of vanity, I want to stand tall. Because of fear, they want to get rid of the fear of life by acquiring material things. I recently rented a house in the mountains and wanted to see how other people\’s yards were decorated. I searched online and found a lot of videos posted by people who live in the mountains. The strange thing is that these videos of ordinary life, There are so many people watching. Why is this so? Maybe many people are like me. They feel tired living in the city, but they are not brave enough to go to the mountains. They worry about this and that, so they always feel envious when they see others living the life they like. Fortunately, I now have the courage, so I also came to some conclusions similar to Thoreau\’s. As long as the heart is simple, life is really not complicated. Living in the mountains is quiet and comfortable. Although the work is hard, it is far less complicated than in the city. Life here is so impetuous and expensive, and it is not as difficult as imagined. There is just a saying that freedom is not difficult. The key is whether you dare to be free and whether you give up what you need to give up to gain freedom. Thoreau said: \”Compared with our self-perception, public opinion is nothing but a weak and powerless tyrant.\” If external public opinion is too strong, it is still a tyrant, so freedom sometimes requires the courage to fight against tyrants. Someone said to Thoreau: I don\’t understand why you don\’t save some money. You like traveling so much. You can get in a car and go to Fitchburg today to see this country. The fare for that stretch of thirty miles was ninety cents, while a road repairman\’s day fare was sixty cents. Thoreau said: Let\’s see who gets to Fitchburg first. Thoreau calculated that at the speed he was walking, he could reach it in less than a day. If you have to earn fare before going out, you will have to work for one day, and then you will arrive at some time the next day. Of course, this is still the case if you are lucky enough to find a job in time, but nevertheless, you will still be working most of the day. Many people think that only by making money can they enjoy the good things in life, so they spend most of their time making money, and then use the money they earn to buy some controversial freedoms in life. They also have to worry about it while walking on the road. What to do if the money is gone. Thoreau said: \”The British were the first to go to India to make a fortune, so that they could return to England after making money.\” Many people exchange health for money so that they can exchange money for health when they are sick. Sometimes the simpler the way of life, the closer we can get to the truth of life, and those ways that require us to work hard to maintain have their own problems. Because if it is suitable for you, you will not feel uncomfortable. Just like a pair of shoes, you will know whether they are suitable or not when you wear them. Those shoes that are uncomfortable to wear will continue to be worn, if it is not because the shoes are so expensive. I have face because these shoes look so good and enviable. Thoreau said: Most luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, and it greatly hinders human progress. In terms of luxury and comfort, the wisest people live simpler and more modestly than the poor. They live poor externally, but they are richer than anyone else internally. Because you are rich at heart, your life is simple. We have many reasons to read \”Walden\”, in order to learn to live, to see the truth of life, to feel the peace of life, to see the meaning of life, to know what people should do in this life, or, we just Just to see that wise and lovely Thoreau. American critic Joseph Wood Crutchie said: His book is generally considered to be one of the undisputed six or eight masterpieces in American literature. There are a lot of American literature, and there are more than a dozen writers who have won the Nobel Prize. But six books were selected from all the works, and \”Walden\” is among them. Today, a concept of success is widely circulated, and the pursuit of success has become the lifelong goal of many people. Although a large number of people already hate this, such as Chen Danqing, Feng Tang and others, Chen Danqing said that he hates seeing a group of people rushing forward brainlessly, and the \”success concept\” kills people. But this phenomenon is actually an element of social development. Without these people who collectively move forward, society would not develop so fast, and housing prices would not be so expensive. Development is a good thing and is beneficial to people, but in terms of richness In the material environment, if you are not careful, it is not people who control materials, but materials that control people. Therefore, Thoreau\’s words and warnings are valuable. In fact, Thoreau\’s proposition is \”simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.\” Eliminate all unnecessary things, and what remains is real life. And throughout his life, he has been a practitioner of this \”minimalist life\”. Someone once asked Thoreau, how could you give up so much happiness in life? Thoreau replied, Because I like this life very much. He lives alone in a self-built cabin, leaving behind the fetters of trivial matters in life. He put aside all the obsessions in his heart and bathed in the beauty of nature\’s lakes and mountains. He cleansed his soul again and again and lived the simplest and richest life. As he wrote in \”Walden\”: I am willing to plunge deeply into life, suck out the marrow of life, live a solid and simple life, eliminate all content that is not part of life, and force life to the limit. Desperate, use the most basic form, simple, simple, simpler. The best state of life for a person is to learn to subtract from life. For the rest of their lives, I hope everyone can get rid of the shackles of material desires and obsessions and find their true freedom. Like it and share it with your friends. Download link: The verification code is universal across the entire network! Please scan the QR code on the right via WeChat or search \”Doudehui\” on WeChat and follow the public account, reply \”399\” and follow the prompts.