“Some of you, we all know,
are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were,
gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are
unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the
coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come
to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an
hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my
sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into
business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the
Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of
brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always
promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent;
seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison
offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of
civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that
you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his
coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick,
that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away
in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in
the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.”
Since the global
financial crisis many folks in the blogosphere are relating there experiences
with debt and how to escape from it. In the above quote Henry David Thoreau is
speaking eloquently from his own experience. As an ambitious and thoughtful
young writer he published his first book at his own expense only to find that
it did not sell and he was left with a large debt and a pile of unsalable books
in the attic. Many an enterprising person if not the whole world has been
caught up in the irrational exuberance of the boom years and invested in a
property or business enterprise with borrowed money only to find that suddenly
the return is not there. It seems that the inevitable consequence if not out
and out bankruptcy is a long period of struggle and most drastic austerity for
everyone. At the moment some of the hottest words on google search are
“thrift”, “frugality” “How to save money” and so on. It seems every one is
watching every coin these days. It seems that the economic system has seized up
and is just not capable of delivering even sufficient necessities for everyone
anymore. Thoreau describes a similar situation in his time “The nation itself,
with all its so called improvements, which by the way are all external and
superficial is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment , cluttered
with furniture and tripped by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless
expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the millions in the land,
and the only cure for it, as for them,
is in a rigid economy a stern and more
Spartan simplicity of life and an elevation of purpose”
Many people today are feeling crushed under a mountain of debt and are desperately seeking a way out. In
“Walden” Thoreau describes how he lived for 2 years a life style of radical
simplicity in a self-built cabin in the woods on squatted land. His cabin is
described in loving detail was 15 feet by 10 feet by 8 feet high, about the size of a
small shipping container. He baked his own bread, grew his own beans and minded his
own business. From his experience he wrote his book “Walden” which although not
recognized in his day is now seen as one of the greatest of American classics
which continues to inspire millions of people to live a simpler life to this day. It is particularly
useful to those of us trying to escape from debt.
You can read more of Thoreau;, Walden at this link:
Walden, or life in the woods.
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