Wake Up, Human
Wake Up, Human is an exploration of the native powers of the human being. This podcast examines the ways we humans have become disconnected—from our innate wisdom, from each other, and from the natural world—and explores practical strategies for reconnecting to wholeness. Drop in for information and inspiration to help us reawaken and heal ourselves, our relationships, and our planet.
Wake Up, Human
Ep.07: Living a Life of No Regrets | On Henry David Thoreau with Jeffrey S. Cramer
Dive into the world of America's most influential naturalist and social reformer as Shannon Wills welcomes Thoreau scholar Jeffrey S. Kramer to explore the lasting power of Henry David Thoreau's ideas for our modern lives.
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," wrote Thoreau in 1854. But what antidote did he offer to this condition? Kramer, curator of collections at the Thoreau Institute Library and editor of numerous annotated editions of Thoreau's works, unveils the man behind the myths.
Forget what you thought you knew about Walden. Thoreau didn't retreat to his cabin to escape society but to observe it more clearly. He visited town almost daily, maintained deep connections with friends and family, and used his perspective to comment on social issues. Far from being merely a nature writer, Thoreau wove together environmental appreciation and social justice in ways that feel remarkably contemporary.
We explore how Thoreau's act of civil disobedience—refusing to pay taxes to protest slavery—rippled through history to inspire Gandhi, Tolstoy, and Martin Luther King Jr. Kramer shares how small personal acts of kindness formed the backbone of Thoreau's activism, from helping escaped slaves to buying a coat for a poor Irish boy.
The conversation takes unexpected turns as we discuss what organic strawberries teach us about ethical living, why reading an author might be better than meeting them, and how the deceptively simple question "If I am not I, who will be?" might change your life if contemplated daily.
Whether you're a longtime Thoreau devotee or encountering his ideas for the first time, this episode offers fresh insights into living deliberately in a distracted world, following your moral compass when society pulls you elsewhere, and finding authenticity in a culture that rewards conformity.
Subscribe now and join the conversation about reconnecting with our innate human power to heal ourselves, our relationships, and our planet through the timeless wisdom of one of America's most revolutionary thinkers.
Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 7 of the Wake Up Human Podcast. I'm your host, Shannon Wills, and in this episode my guest and I will open the books on a life of contemplation, contribution and living a life of no regrets. It's the life of Henry David Thoreau. Welcome to the Wake Up Human Podcast. I'm Shannon Wills, a curious wanderer with a passion for digging into life's mysteries and mining them for wisdom to apply to our modern lives. This podcast explores the ways we humans have become disconnected from our native ways of knowing what we have lost and what we can gain by coming back into wholeness. Each episode will explore this theme of reconnecting with our innate human power in order to heal ourselves, our relationships and our planet. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let's jump into the latest installment of Wake Up Human.
Shannon W.:The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperationation. So said Henry David Thoreau in his 1854 book Walden. When I read those words as a teenager, I vowed I would never lead a life of quiet desperation. Reading Thoreau's Walden set me on a path of questioning authority and demanding to live according to my own moral compass when I was very young. To live according to my own moral compass when I was very young. His influence through Walden, civil disobedience and other writings has inspired and guided me on my life's journey ever since. Thoreau is probably my earliest inspiration on the theme of waking up to our true potential as human beings. His combined focus on nature, spirituality and social justice is, to me, the epitome of a harmonious life, combining our own life and spirit with the needs of the world. So it's a thrill for me to welcome Thoreau scholar Jeffrey S Kramer to the podcast.
Shannon W.:Jeffrey is an accomplished editor and author and perhaps the foremost living authority on the life and works of Henry David Thoreau. Jeffrey is editor of numerous annotated editions of Thoreau's works, annotations being all those little notes at the bottom of pages in books that explain the context of the writing so we can understand it better. His publications are too numerous to mention in this short bio, but notably he's the editor of a beautiful version of Thoreau's Walden, a fully annotated edition, which was a winner of the 2004 National Outdoor Book Award. His other works include a fully annotated edition of Thoreau's essays, the Penguin Classics edition of the Portable Thoreau and Jeffrey's own compilation, the Quotable Thoreau, which is arguably the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of Thoreau quotations ever assembled. In other words, if you ever come upon a quote attributed to Thoreau and you want to find out whether or not he actually said it, jeffrey is the man for you. Jeffrey has been a professional librarian since 1978, and he is the curator of collections at the Thoreau Institute Library of the Walden Woods Project, which is where I met him. Jeffrey is married to the artist Julia R Berkeley and is the father of two now-grown but formerly homeschooled daughters.
Shannon W.:My conversation with Jeffrey weaves through discussions on Thoreau, the writer, naturalist and social reformer. We'll touch on themes of his two most famous works Walden and Civil Disobedience and discuss what those writings have to offer us for today's activism and social justice work and for just navigating the craziness of the modern world. We'll explore how small personal acts of kindness can be a powerful means of social reform, and Jeffrey and I will each share a couple Thoreau geek stories from our own lives along the way. If you're a fan of Thoreau, you'll likely learn some things you never knew before. If you're not familiar with him, you'll get a primer on topics as diverse as transcendentalism, following a moral compass to make our decisions and living deliberately in a distracted world. We'll even randomly discuss what eating strawberries can teach us about waking up to our place in society and the world.
Shannon W.:Join me for this rich and fascinating conversation in this episode of the Wake Up Human podcast. To learn more about Jeffrey, you can visit his website at jeffreyskramercom. That's Kramer with a C. And now for the interview. Jeffrey, warm welcome to you and thank you so much for joining me on the Wake Up Human podcast.
Jeffrey C.:Thank you, Shannon. It's a pleasure to be here talking to you.
Shannon W.:Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you as well. You work for the Walden Woods Project, whose mission it is to preserve the land, literature and legacy of Henry David Thoreau. For listeners who may be unfamiliar, would you start us off by filling in some background. Who was Henry David Thoreau and why are there people interested in keeping his work and his legacy alive?
Jeffrey C.:Yeah, so Henry David Thoreau is a lot of different things to different people and people are interested in him for very different reasons. So just a quick background he was born in 1817, spent his whole life basically in Concord, massachusetts. He was a writer, he was a poet, he was a schoolteacher, he was a surveyor, he was a social reformer you can go down the list a naturalist of course, and he fell under the spell of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson liked to tutor young writers and thinkers and Thoreau was lucky enough to be sort of tutored by Emerson and began a journal thanks to Emerson's influence, which he kept almost every single day for at least a decade or more. To Emerson's influence, which he kept almost every single day for at least a decade or more, and the journals became a basis for his writings, his lectures and his writings.
Jeffrey C.:He went off to live at Walden Pond, probably one of the most famous incidences in his life. In fact there is a joke among Thoreauvians that people think that Thoreau spent half his life at Walden Pond and half his life in jail, because it's the only two things they know about. But he went to Walden to write a book about his brother, john, who had died from lockjaw and he and Henry were very close brothers. And Thoreau had a difficult time mourning John's death and decided he wanted to write a book about a boat trip that he and John had taken from Concord, massachusetts, to Concord, new Hampshire, and it needed to place a peace and quiet to write that book. So he asked Ralph Waldo Emerson, who owned some land at Walden Pond, if he could build a small house there to write. So basically it's a writing retreat. But while he was there people began asking him questions Henry, what are you doing there?
Jeffrey C.:Walden Woods was a strange place for Thoreau to live. He was white, middle class, son of a businessman, a Harvard graduate, you name it. And Walden Woods, which was marginal land meaning it was not land that was good for anything other than growing trees in woodlots, for cutting down and for fueling your home or building things was land that, because it was marginal, also became used for marginalized people. So you had freed slaves might live there. You had the alcoholics who were living there. You had people who weren't welcome in Concord Society, including the Irish who would come over to build the railroad, who really weren't part of Concord Society. They lived in Walden Woods. So for Thorogh to do. That was very strange. People asked him what are you doing there? And he started giving a lecture called A History of Myself, to explain why he was at Walden Pond, and that lecture, over a very long period of time, developed into the book Walden.
Jeffrey C.:So when Walden first came out, it was called Walden, or Life in the Woods, and people began to think about Walden, or Thoreau's lifestyle, as being very much connected with living a life in the woods, building a small house or a cabin and living in the woods. And that's not what it's about. So when I talk about Walden to student groups, for instance, not being a book about a man living in the woods, but simply about a man living. And so there's a misconception about Thoreau in that they think, or people think, that he went off to the woods to escape from society. But he didn't. He went to observe not just his own life but the life of his neighbors and his society so that he could comment on it.
Jeffrey C.:So we should never think of Thoreau as somebody who's going away from society or against society. He's very, very much a part of his society. Walden he went into Concord almost every single day to visit people, to see friends, to see family, to go to the post office to get his newspaper, which he read devoutly, and all those things. So it's very much a part of who he was. And he left Walden simply because Emerson was going off to Europe on a lecture tour and wanted somebody to take care of his family while he was gone. And so Walden finished his first book and his friend Emerson asked him to take care of his family.
Jeffrey C.:And then the other thing I mentioned was his night in jail which is apparently the other half of his life and he had stopped paying his poll tax as a personal protest, pretty much to say. I do not want to support a government that allows for slavery. That's the simplification. But we were heading towards a war with Mexico over Texas and various things were happening the Fugitive Slave Act. So many things were happening and Anthea were realized that both the government and the church supported the idea of slavery in so many ways, and so he wanted to withdraw his support. He knew that that kind of protest would not end slavery. It would make it be pretty much unnoticed. He didn't do it for that reason. He did it for the reason that he personally had to protest. He could not allow his own individual support in any way for that government.
Shannon W.:A moral protest. A moral protest.
Jeffrey C.:And so he was arrested for non-payment of taxes, was thrown into jail and someone and we literally do not know who paid his taxes for him. There's all sorts of speculation. No one knows absolutely, so if anybody tells you they know, they really don't.
Shannon W.:Okay, because you would know. If anyone knew, I think it would be you.
Jeffrey C.:I would hope, but you never know. And so he was tossed out of jail the next morning. He was pretty upset about it, but he eventually gave a lecture about it, and that lecture became an essay that was published as resistance to civil government and, after he died, was renamed civil disobedience. Yeah.
Jeffrey C.:And that whole concept. So people have trouble with Thoreau's former protests because they say, well, it did nothing, it didn't end slavery, it didn't help in any way the people who were enslaved. But if you think about the different ways in which people protest or try to enact social reform, writing is certainly one of them.
Jeffrey C.:I mean the voice is a very powerful way, as we know. So when Thoreau gave his lecture but eventually wrote his essay, that essay became such a powerful voice for individuals who want to protest a government that they felt was doing something morally reprehensible, and that idea has spread around the world thanks to Thoreau's essay. Reprehensible and that idea has spread around the world thanks to Thoreau's essay. So we have an essay that was influencing not only Gandhi in India, but Tolstoy in Russia while was reading Civil Disobedience, trying to figure out how to work with and what to do with serfs that are on his property in Russia. We have Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights Movement reading Civil Disobedience. We have every college student wanting to end the war in Vietnam reading civil disobed protest. It's your responsibility to protest when something around you is going on that is wrong. It is time to make your voice heard, and it's however you can make your voice heard, and whatever you can do is something that you need to do.
Jeffrey C.:Amazing amazing piece. So if you think about Thoreau just to get back to your original question if you think about Thoreau, just to get back to your original question, if you think about Thoreau, and why is he important? He's important for several reasons. One is to that understanding of the natural world and the world in which we live. I mean to appreciate nature for what it has, what it offers, what it can be, but also to appreciate one's own life, that we're not wasting our life doing various things that don't make us happy. The important thing is to make sure that you're getting through this life by being responsible to yourself and your neighbors, but also being happy and trying to get through your life without causing harm to anyone, and also to enact various forms of social reform, whatever that might be.
Shannon W.:Yeah, so with these two wings, I recognize that Thoreau wrote much more than just Walden and civil disobedience. However, these are his most famous pieces and looking at these two wings, which could seem separate and yet by virtue of the fact that it's the same man and the same life and the same moment, then we see how these two potentially different concepts are actually very much interrelated, right.
Jeffrey C.:Absolutely. I mean, when people edit Thoreau's works, they like to separate out what they call the natural history essays from the social reform essays, as if they're written by two different people, and they're not. And they are so intertwined. And in essays that you think of as social reform, there are beautiful passages about nature, and in the natural history essays you find incredible passages that explain what our purpose on earth is and how we need to have social reform. So it's so intermixed.
Shannon W.:Reading Walden. I read Walden years before I read Civil Disobedience and I was fired up when I read Walden. That inspired me, that planted seeds in me, that transformed the person I wanted to become, and that was quote unquote nature writing.
Jeffrey C.:Exactly, exactly.
Shannon W.:Thank you. Thank you, Jeffrey, for that introduction.
Jeffrey C.:You're very welcome.
Shannon W.:You and I met 10 years ago now. It was 2011 when I made a pilgrimage to Walden Pond. I took the train out from my home at the time of Oakland, california, out to Concord, massachusetts, and after the train and the walking and the public transportation and I finally made it to Walden Woods. It was you who met me there and you so graciously received me there at the library and showed me around and set me on my way to the shores of Walden Pond with an extra dose of inspiration. And ever since we met, I've been curious about your story. I've wondered how does one become a foremost scholar of Thoreau and curator of collections at the Walden Woods Project? Will you share a bit about the journey that led you to Thoreau and how this small but important niche of the world became your life's work?
Jeffrey C.:Yeah, happy to. Those are two kind of separate questions. So let me just say that I didn't start out as a scholar of American literature at all. I was an English major back in college and I took that role very seriously, as in I loved British literature. I loved English literature from England and could never quite understand why anybody would want to read an American author. It was just part of my nature that I was Anglophile. So I literally tried to get through four years of college without ever reading an American author. All I wanted to read were the British, and it got very close. I read a little bit of Robert Frost, but that was about it. But a friend said that I should read some Thoreau. So I picked up an anthology of Thoreau's writings and read it, of Thoreau's writings and read it.
Jeffrey C.:No epiphany, no great change in my life. But one thing that did impress me was the way he wrote. I absolutely love the way he put words together, the way he put sentences together. I just never quite experienced that kind of writing before, and so I kept reading him over and over again, not for the meaning per se, but just for how he was saying it. And then I realized that what he had to say really resonated with who I was or who I wanted to be. And I kept reading him more and more and then I just that was kind of it, there was no turning back from Henry David Thoreau more. And then I just that was kind of it, there was no turning back from Henry David Thoreau. So I did as much independent reading of him as I could.
Jeffrey C.:Back in those days there was a place in Concord, massachusetts, called the Thoreau Lyceum and it was a bookstore, a small museum, a small library, but it was a place where Thoreauvians could gather and chat, and so it's where some of the thorough scholars were that I admired, people you'd want to talk to and learn more, and I was going there and they would host these seminars, and so I decided I would take this seminar on thorough. I don't remember what the actual course was, but there was a thorough scholar who's going to be teaching at like a 12-week seminar and I didn't really know who he was. So I went to the first evening seminar and there he was and I went up to him and introduced myself and just said, like you know who are you Meaning? You know where do you teach, you know, where are you teaching? What great Thoreauian scholarly epic have you written? What are your credentials? And he looked at me straight in the eye and said, jeff, I'm a transcendentalist. And I thought, oh my God, I have to get out of here. I mean, I want my money back. I mean, this is just. I want a teacher, not a transcendentalist.
Jeffrey C.:But I decided to stay for the evening and this guy was the most amazing teacher I've ever experienced. I mean, he was brilliant. And I realized after listening to him and talking to him, I too was a transcendentalist. I loved the ideals of the transcendentalist. I loved what they had to say and I could then afterwards say not too loudly, I didn't want people to hear me, but I could then say, yes, I too am a transcendentalist. So, jumping ahead a bit, I did various things and I did a small book on Robert Frost and things. But it was time to do work on Thoreau, who I just loved. I just loved and I was working on a small book of Thoreau's writings on freedom and slavery and for a series that I was told to go visit somebody who worked at the Waldenwich Project Thoreau Institute and get a lesser known quotation for the book.
Shannon W.:So you started by visiting the library as well.
Jeffrey C.:Yes, exactly that is how it started. So I went, went out there, saw this person's scholar named Brad Dean, who gave me a desk with a couple of quotations on it. But but a couple of days before I had gone there, the head of rare books at the Boston Public Library, which is where I had been working for 20 odd years, came down and said Jeff, you should meet this woman, susan, we just hired. She used to be the curator at the Thoreau Institute, and so sometimes I'm slow, but I picked up on that one. That meant if Susan was now working at the BPL, she was no longer working at the Thoreau Institute. So I went out, brad handed me a disc and I said do you have an opening? And he said, yeah, are you interested? And it turns out that they had done a nationwide search, which I never noticed, never saw it anywhere. I had been working for the city of Boston for 20 years, desperately wanted to get out and had been looking for other work, and our paths never crossed, they never found the right person. And so he said you know, write a letter to our executive director, which I did. He said write a letter to our executive director, which I did. And I did that.
Jeffrey C.:Within a week, I was invited for an interview and I was driving out for my interview, at which point I was getting really, really nervous. This was the kind of job you could taste. This was the kind of job you just wanted. You were spending your career aiming for that kind of position and I knew, yeah, the dream job. And I knew I was going to see something really stupid. I mean, there's just no way you can go into a situation like that, be as nervous as I was getting and not really put your foot in it. So I was driving along and it was about five or six minutes away. Now, people may not know that the Walden Woods project was founded by Don Henley from the Rock the Eagles and yeah, so, um, he was the founder, and so I decided I'm gonna leave it to fate. And I said to myself as I was driving there, if I hear the Eagles on the radio, this will be my job and no.
Jeffrey C.:And as soon as I said that Hotel California started on the radio, and soon as I said that Hotel California started on the radio, and as I approached the Walden Woods project, we had a gravel parking lot in those days. So as I pulled into the parking space the windows were cracked a bit so I could breathe. The song faded. You could hear the tires on the gravel like it was in a movie. It was just like absolutely a perfect moment. Got out of that car knowing it was going to be my job, went for my interview. I still said stupid things. It didn't help any but nonetheless, within a week we're having lunch and I had my job so, oh, my gosh one of those amazingly fatalistic um a lot of coincidences, but everything kind of fit together and it was just.
Jeffrey C.:It was just amazing.
Shannon W.:So that's incredible, yeah, so.
Jeffrey C.:I've been there over 20 years now and getting to spend my day thinking about Thoreau, talking to people like yourself who are interested in Thoreau, helping scholars, helping researchers, helping talking to school groups, doing all that kind of thing. So I get to spend my day just talking about the author that I love to read and think about.
Shannon W.:You got your dream job I got my dream job.
Jeffrey C.:Yeah, excellent.
Shannon W.:Yeah, that does remind me. I remember when I was still in, you know, talking about Don Henley just for a moment, when I was still, I want to say I was still in high school or shortly out of high school, and the news made it all the way out to my little town in Idaho, where I was growing up, that Don Henley was working extremely hard to protect the Walden Woods and had put together the Walden Woods Project. And even then, you know, people were just cheering for him and hoping he was going to succeed and that he was going to save this land from development, and it's really what a blessing to look back on.
Jeffrey C.:You know, 30 years ago or so, yes, More than 30 years ago he did this and it's really a credit to him and what he created and the rest of the world, with credit that it's lasted this long. It's continued to do its work. The Weldon Witch Project that it's lasted this long it's continued to do its work has built an education department and an incredible research library and yeah it's just an amazing place to work.
Shannon W.:I'm so happy for you. I'm so happy for you that you had that opportunity and you took it, you found it, and that all the stars aligned to get you there. Yeah, let's talk for just a minute about transcendentalism. You mentioned that first talk that you attended at the Lyceum and the man who introduced himself as a transcendentalist and you said you sort of scoffed at that and then you basically walked out a transcendentalist yourself. Would you speak for just a moment about the transcendentalist and what it meant for Thoreau to be a transcendentalist?
Jeffrey C.:Yeah. So I mean, how the individuals felt about being labeled a transcendentalist is a little hard to say. It was certainly a derogatory term at first. It was not complementary when I think it was in a review of Emerson's first book, nature, that somebody called him a transcendentalist, and it was not meant in a nice way, so it wasn't necessarily complementary and there was never really an actual group of them. I mean, they were like-minded individuals we met at various times, but I think what it meant for Thoreau would be to look at the world in a similar way to Emerson.
Jeffrey C.:So basically that to be a transcendentalist, you are intuiting truth directly from God. You are intuiting the understanding of right from wrong, good from evil, in a way that has nothing to do with experiential learning. You know it in your soul, you know it in your heart this is right, this is wrong without ever having been taught it, without ever having to learn it through an experience. And that kind of connection to the world around you is so important. And so when you look at the transcendentalists as a group even though they weren't really such, there is a deep spiritual sense to it that you are deeply connected to God, whatever that God may be. I mean for Thoreau. He was very pantheistic, but still a sense that there is a higher meaning, there are higher laws to which we must obey, but also a sense of responsibility to those around you.
Jeffrey C.:So there was a lot of social reform going on in various ways, mostly abolitionism and ending slavery, but for others it was Native American rights, it was women's rights, it was very educational reform. This is the time of Horace Mann and all his educational reform. Kindergartens were starting thanks to Elizabeth Peabody, also one of the circle. You had all sorts of people doing all sorts of things that were trying to make the world a better place, and that was part of what I love about transcendentalism. It's not just a sort of a spiritual head in your clouds kind of idea of what would make the world ideal, but you have to make it happen. And so you know, I look at Thoreau and, yes, he wrote things like Civil Disobedience, slavery in Massachusetts and some wonderfully powerful essays about what we can do, and that in itself was doing something. His writing is an act. It's doing something to make change.
Jeffrey C.:And one of the things that I find really interesting about Thoreau is how he helped individual people, so that if he couldn't stop slavery, for instance, what he did do was help individual enslaved people who could escape to the North.
Jeffrey C.:So his home, the Thoreau family home, was part of the Underground Railroad but Thoreau himself was, you know, helping feed the person, he was bathing their feet, he was making sure they were healthy enough to travel north and he would buy tickets on the railroad. He'd accompany that person on the train and when there were no slave catchers around which there were in those days Thoreau would just hop off the train and walk back to Concord and the person would escape to the north, to the north um. But there's also like, uh, there was a situation where one of the irish so the irish shanties, where they were living when they're building the railroad, right next to where thorough was living at walden pond. At the same time, um, in one of the families living there there was a young boy who you know had his clothing was thin, he never would have probably survived the winter, um, and he never would have probably survived the winter, but Thoreau bought him a coat.
Jeffrey C.:So, while other people look at something for lack of a better term what they would have considered the Irish problem, what do you do with the Irish who are here in Concord? For Thoreau? It's not that question, it's looking at each individual. How can he help a person? So he can help this young boy by buying him a coat. He can help the enslaved person by helping them escape to credo. So he can't end the large problem, but he can help individual people.
Jeffrey C.:And I talked to a lot of high school students and school groups and I say you know, sometimes these problems that we're facing are so overwhelming and you feel totally unable to do anything that would make a difference and that is so understandable. But you can just look at the student next to you or look at your neighbor and ask yourself what can I do for them? You know, do they need lunch? Can I mow my neighbor's lawn? Can I shovel for them? Can I do something that will make their life a little bit better Without them needing to ask? Just do those things and those acts are a form of social reform. You're making the world a better place. And if everybody practiced that on a very small level, everybody is helping their neighbor. What an amazing world this would be their neighbor.
Shannon W.:what an amazing world this would be, absolutely. And I I think there's an element in that of seeing the humanity in the other and the worth of the other, that it's one step outside of ourselves to help our neighbors, and it's another step, or a different step, I guess, to recognize the humanity of people who the society of the moment believes are lesser human beings. Exactly so, by the fact that he was assisting slaves to escape to the north or buying the coat for the young Irish boy, both groups that were considered not I don't even know second-class citizens. They were considered, I would say, subhuman. And by his actions he is showing to himself and also living into the world, respect for his fellow man or woman. Yes, absolutely, and yeah, and that's another form of activism, it really is. So we should never feel and I do too. Sometimes I go, what can I do?
Shannon W.:But we should never feel that we can't. There are plenty of marginalized people in our society today.
Shannon W.:There are people who some people look at as subhuman still today in our society, and then there are the animals, the non-human animals and the natural world, which get treated as objects and commodities yes perspective, so that we can see those things rather other than less, than if we can see them as having an equal lust for life and an equal right to life and worthy of our attention and respect can change how we address them, how we relate to them. And when we do that, who's to say what ripples might not come from that? So, absolutely thinking of the, the legacy of Thoreau, I am recognizing now there are probably ripples from his life and from so many people's lives that we don't even know what they are.
Jeffrey C.:I think about the ideas of civil disobedience and personal protests and all of that. Many people, particularly over the last decade or so, have done various forms of protesting that don't even realize where that concept comes from. It doesn't really matter where it's from, it doesn't matter that you can trace it back to Henry David Thoreau. The important thing is that that legacy, that idea of that you need to do something to make the world a better place, that you can do something to make the world a better place, that people are embracing that and I think right now I'm embracing it a lot. It reminds me not to reminisce, but it reminds me of the 60s, where we did think we could change the world and we did in many ways and we failed in many ways. But there are generations and I think we're seeing it now where people are saying this has got to stop, this has got to change, we have got to fix this, and that's just a beautiful thing to see.
Shannon W.:It's interesting because the word transcendentalist or transcendentalism seems to suggest if not an escape from the world, at least a sort of a rising above the chaos of the day-to-day world. And that's not what I've experienced Thoreau to be, and it's also not what I hear you saying him to be be, and it's also not what I hear you saying him to be, that there is a recognition of the spiritual, not just the recognition, but a primacy perhaps, of the spiritual law, of the universal law, such that then we would bring that back down into our day-to-day lives and our actions in the world with our friends, family and neighbors.
Jeffrey C.:Absolutely, and that sense of higher laws or a higher obligation that goes beyond civil law, that says you know, it doesn't even matter if the majority wants X. It's not right, it's not moral, it's not helpful to the world we live in, it's not helpful to our country. It's not just that there are times when the individual's conscience and he means this in the sense of legislators that it doesn't matter about the vote, it matters that you are doing what you know is the right thing. That always becomes a question of debate. But obviously there are things that are moral and there are things that are immoral, and Thoreau felt that that should be the absolute litmus test of what it is. And if you think about it, you know if you are. So Thoreau is very pantheistic and he said that you know, and he read every sacred text that was available to him to read in the mid-19th century.
Jeffrey C.:And that was quite a lot, and what he said was in all those texts. Basically, they all boil down to one simple thing, which is the golden rule To treat others as you wish they would treat you, and that is how we should all live. And so, if you think about social reform, if you think about the way we do things in this world bad things, horrible things if you had that moral sense that you were intuiting directly from God, you can't harm a person. You can't let a person starve, you can't let a person be cold. You cannot mistreat a person because of the color of their skin, or their sexual orientation, or their religion. You can't enslave a person. Once you take that as your moral compass, you can't do any of those things that make this world such a horribly bad place.
Shannon W.:It also calls to mind the essay Civil Disobedience, and my understanding is that sort of the key or a key message of that essay was exactly that we, on the one hand, individuals, should not permit our governments to overrule our conscience, our moral conscience, and that, furthermore, not only should we not permit that, but that we have a duty to push back against that Correct and in his own day I imagine it was considered a strong message.
Jeffrey C.:For the handful of people that may have heard it. Not very many people knew that work, unfortunately in his day.
Shannon W.:I think today it is equally feel my heart beat faster, I feel that my own conscience gets sparked to life, and I want to be that person. I want to be the person to say I will not permit this in my name, I will not, in good conscience, participate in the actions of my government and I will push back. Now we're in a very complex world and the pushing back can look like a lot of things and it can look overwhelming as well, as you mentioned, especially with young people who are looking at the tragic consequences of the fact that we have let our governments overrule our consciences. Consciences, yeah, and I just I don't know that I have a particular question around it, but I just want to put that peg in the ground. I wonder if you have any thoughts about how do we take that message and utilize it in today's complex world.
Jeffrey C.:Yeah well, I mean, it's a very difficult question. So when I first started reading and thinking about Thoreau, the ideas of the essay Civil Disobedience were much easier to. I don't want to say accept, but to put forth. And now we live in a world where people are saying that what they're doing is a matter of individual conscience, that they are doing what they believe is right, even though we may disagree with what they consider right. But the additional problem is the amount of damage that a person, an individual person, can create. So I mean, in Thoreau's day, nobody could take down the Twin Towers. I mean you couldn't do that kind of thing. You couldn't, you know, drive a truck with a bomb into a crowd. You couldn't even use your vehicle to drive into a crowd and hurt people. You couldn't have weapons that could kill. So an individual today can cause more actual damage in minutes than the militia could do in Thoreau's day, I mean, if you think about it. So when Thoreau said those things, what we can do now under what we consider individual conscience and doing right, and even being told by God this is the right thing to do, is devastating. So it's a very, very difficult thing to teach. And so, 20 odd years ago I might teach civil disobedience.
Jeffrey C.:What does the essay mean and how does that affect us? And now it's just a discussion. It's a totally different piece for me in how we approach it. It's not as easily approachable as it was. It's not as easily approachable as it was and there is the complete misconception about the work that the essay Civil Disobedience has anything to do with civility. So there is a sense that civil disobedience is disobedient in a polite way and it has nothing to do with civility. It's disobedience of civil law and that's a great misunderstanding.
Jeffrey C.:So you know, people look at Thoreau as a pacifist, which he was clearly not. I mean even civil disobedience. He talks about things in a very sort of militaristic way at times and when you get to essays like the ones you read about John Brown after the raid on Harpers Ferry, he is saying literally there are times when it is okay to pick up a rifle and kill or be killed. I mean that's not our concept of Henry David Thoreau, based upon our misconception of the essay of civil disobedience. So he's a very complex figure. So he's a very complex figure.
Jeffrey C.:But if you look at Thoreau as a person who is saying, in relation to John others and what he thought was doing right. But now again, what happened at Harpers Ferry? Yes, people got killed, but we're talking a small number as opposed to if there was a John Brown today who wanted to do something to make a point. You can imagine the havoc and the death toll that a person could do if they wanted to now. So it's such a hard thing to balance. It's just a very difficult, difficult issue.
Shannon W.:What that also suggests to me is that we can't expect that essay, or any essay, say, or you know any essay, but we can't expect that essay to have an answer.
Jeffrey C.:It's not going to be a map that we can follow to world peace yeah, I mean, and it does talk about morality and higher laws and the sense that you know right from wrong and we should be doing what we know in our hearts to be right. You know, but the person who's fighting you is also doing what they believe in their heart is right, and that's becomes a very, very difficult thing that's the trick.
Shannon W.:That's the trick because, if we did agree on this and I'm not sure we all do, but if we did agree on living according to a, a moral code, or yeah, living according to a moral code, or, yeah, living according to our moral compass, first, that does suggest that, from that deep moral place, that we would not harm our neighbor, we would not cut down the forests that allow us to breathe, we would not pollute our own waters, et cetera, et cetera, our own waters, et cetera, et cetera. And yet we do, and we often do in the name of doing what's right, and what one person thinks is right is another person thinks is wrong. So it's complex.
Jeffrey C.:It is, and that is why, for Thoreau, he signed off from the church, because he saw a difference between formalized religion, which is what wars are fought over, and the morality of what the religion is trying to teach, which is why he thought, after reading so many sacred texts, that they all really are saying the same thing. But when you add on that layer of the formalized religion and the doctrines of whatever church it might be, it becomes a completely different issue.
Shannon W.:Yeah, and this is one of the things, one of the key themes that I'm wanting to explore with Wake Up Human. There's sort of two themes that I'm balancing. One of them is the theme of reconnecting to our original human nature that came before that social conditioning and the cultural conditioning that teaches us right and wrong in ways that may actually go against our better judgment. And then, balanced with that, is this call to deprogram ourselves from what we've already taken on, from our cultures and societies, when we recognize that they're not serving us and that they could even be blinding us to doing what's right. And so stepping away from the church is just one example of many, many things that we could do. But I think that Thoreau, to me, was really living into both of those wings, in that he was very much a naturalist and made this call to spend more time in the natural world as a way of coming more into harmony with nature and with our human nature, and at the same time, he was also pushing back against the structures that he felt were damaging nature and um, so just wanting to recognize that that I think I don't know if he was ahead of his time, but he was certainly outside of the status quo of his time in finding that balance. Searching for that balance, yes, shifting gears just slightly, but along those same lines of putting thorough's work into cultural and historical context.
Shannon W.:You have edited a number of annotated editions of Thoreau's works and I imagine you have made good use of the library in your efforts to create those annotated editions. And I wonder what that process of annotation is like. I think of that process, I think I romanticize it a little bit. Process, I think I romanticize it a little bit. I think of you in the back room pouring through the tomes you know of Thoreau's writings and deepening a relationship with him and maybe dipping into the context of his life. Am I over-romanticizing that? What is?
Jeffrey C.:that effort like that there is. I mean, that is certainly part of it. It is, you know, delving into books. And what is that effort like if you've never read it before? And so I mean I had read Bolden Lord knows how many times before I came around to annotating it, and it's literally starting with word number one and starting to read the sentence and try to say to yourself, if I've never read this before, and I knew nothing about Henry David Thoreau, if I knew nothing about the Transcendentalists, I knew nothing about the mid-19th century, what won't I understand in this sentence?
Jeffrey C.:And then what I did, which was very different from how other people annotate works. So if you look at, if you go to any annotated edition, most likely you will find you know, when you go to the sources of what they used, they will be using some modern sources. I did not use any source that Henry David Thoreau could not have read. So if I came across a word in Thoreau's work that I thought needed to be annotated, I just didn't go to a dictionary, I didn't go to the Oxford English Dictionary, I didn't want a definition of the word that Henry David Thoreau could not have read, because I need to make sure that the context of that word was mid-19th century. Was his version of how that work was used?
Shannon W.:That is the kind of annotation I would say that Thoreau deserves, or someone who's been so meticulous in their writing deserves that kind of annotation. And, at the same time, I would expect erroneously, I hear that anyone who would be annotating an edition would attempt to use the sources that the author originally used. I didn't realize that there was such a practice of annotating using modern sources, so that is new information to me and I very much respect your efforts to go back, and also I think it would be so much more fun. It's not going to be fun to look and see what the 2021 edition of the online Oxford dictionary says. Yes, absolutely.
Jeffrey C.:And it brings you closer to the original work. I mean I just felt doing that, not that I was closer to Thoreau, but really closer to the original work. I mean I just felt doing that um, not that I was closer to thorough, but really closer to his writings and really getting a closer understanding of what it was now I was going to ask you that if it did actually sometimes make you feel closer to thorough himself no, I'm, you know, I wish it.
Jeffrey C.:I mean, I tell the story of when I was starting out on the journey of learning about Thoreau and I really wanted to find who Thoreau was. I really wanted to know him, I wanted to become his friend, so to speak, over time. And I used to tell this story about when I was this was my college age just out of college, and I would bring prospective girlfriends, you know, to Walden Pond. It's a if, if they could walk around Walden Pond with me and have listened to me spout about Tharo for an hour, an hour and a half, and say afterwards you know, want to go get a cup of coffee, or something like that. They didn't want to rush home.
Speaker 3:I thought maybe it gives them potential. That was your filter.
Jeffrey C.:That was my filter Really idiotic and stupid, but I was young.
Shannon W.:I think it's very sweet.
Jeffrey C.:There was this time when this person wanted to go to Walton Pond with me and I tell how she went for me and I went for Thoreau and neither of us found what we wanted. So it was because I really thought there was something I could get by walking around Walden Pond, by sitting by the shore of the pond that he loved or being on the river that he loved to, you know, row down, being in the pond that he loved or being on the river that he loved to, you know grow down, um, being in the places that he wanted to be or was at, and they were so important to him, and I thought somehow I would, I don't know, meet his ghost walking down the railroad tracks, or just something that would bring me closer to an understanding of not just the writings but the man. And that never happened. It never happened.
Jeffrey C.:In fact, it's gone to the point and I'm not sure I should actually be saying this out loud, but it's gotten to the point where I have become so immersed that the into the words that what is absolutely important to me are those written words on the page, and what is less important to me or has become less important to me, are those written words on the page. And what is less important to me or has become less important to me is Henry David Thoreau. And so you know. There are so many people who, as you, have, come on a pilgrimage to Walden Pond, and I did when I was in college. To graduate from college, Thomas Hardy was the writer for me. I took myself on a three-week pilgrimage to England to spend every moment in any place that Hardy was at.
Shannon W.:So you can relate.
Jeffrey C.:I can relate to the experience. But now, after years and years of experience thinking about Thoreau's writings and what he was trying to do, the Henry David Thoreau part of it means so little to me, and I know so many people who you know will go places and stand on a corner in a town that not even conquered that Thoreau is known to have been at and take a picture of himself on the corner and it's like okay, but what does that actually do for?
Jeffrey C.:an understanding of what Thoreau was writing about. What does that actually do for an understanding of what Thoreau was writing about? And I remember reading a letter that Thoreau had written to his friend I think it was HGO Blake at the time and he said you know Blake wanted to meet him. And he said you don't want to meet the Claude Hopper that I am. You know, the best of me is in my writings and I took that very seriously that, yes, I think about all the great writers there are, and would you really want to sit down and have a cup of coffee with them or go for a walk with them? And the answer is probably no. You may not actually really want to meet them. What you love is the essence of what they put down on paper.
Jeffrey C.:And when I talk to students and actually do lectures and things, one of the questions is like what would you say to that? Like if you could go back and meet Thoreau, what would you say to him? And I say I don't want to meet him. I mean I might want to meet Emerson. Emerson was very kind in many ways. He was not considered a warm person, but if you knocked on his door at his house. He'd let you in and he would talk to you. You can't imagine Thoreau doing that, so I don't think I'd ever want to meet him in any way.
Shannon W.:Oh, that is so interesting.
Jeffrey C.:There's an anecdote by a woman named Elizabeth Hoare who's going to marry one of Emerson's brothers, but he had died. And she once told Emerson, I love Henry, but I do not like him. And I thought, oh my God, there it is. And it's like, yes, I love Thore, him. And I thought, oh my god, there it is, you know. And it's like, yes, I love Thoreau, I love what he writes about, I love what he says. Do I like him? I don't know. I bet he would be not a necessarily very likable person. He's a bit ornery, um, you know he's. I mean, emerson tells the story of, you know, he's sitting in his study and Thoreau would burst through the door and spout to him about something and then turn around and walk away. No interaction, just nothing, Just put it forth. So I'm not sure he would be a person I'd want to meet. I don't know ever. Whatever I wanted to do by trying to meet him across time, I'm not sure, but now it's just the words.
Shannon W.:We do that so often, don't we? I think we tend to put our idols on pedestals as human beings, and often their work. I don't want to say that their, their humanity doesn't live up to their works, but that there are two different things Right, and that we can't judge who that individual would have been based on the work that they've created, especially work such as Thoreau's, which is at such a high level. I think over time, my appreciation of him, of his writing, has increased. So when I first started reading Thoreau, what I was drawn to was the content, was the message. Maybe perhaps the opposite of your experience, but I was drawn to the message of his writing, what he was writing about. And then, as I continued to reread, I realized how incredible a writer he is, how gorgeous his writing, how impeccable his writing. And when I came to the library and I remember looking at a manuscript written in his own hand it did feel the connection to those words, felt magical, felt captivating and strong, felt magical, felt captivating and strong. And it's interesting that you talk about the places that Thoreau visited because, as you know, after I met with you, I did walk over to Walden Pond and that was the end point of my pilgrimage. It was so interesting to me and it was. It was, in a way, it was what I, what I expected it to be, but not why.
Shannon W.:So I got to the end of that pilgrimage, I came around the bend and through the trees and the winding path to the cabin site there on the edge of the pond. And I came around the bend and I saw that cairn, the pile of rocks. There's a pile of rocks. Did not know it was there, never heard of it before. I was expecting to find an old cabin site with a sign and I came upon a big pile of rocks and I realized that there were thousands of rocks, thousands and thousands of little palm-sized rocks piled up like a gravel pile that just got dumped out the back of a gravel truck. And I went up and I think there's a little sign. It says something like each of these rocks was placed here by the hand of a visitor or a pilgrim to this site and I realized that I was the next pilgrim of thousands upon thousands and who knows how many years.
Shannon W.:And I did, of course. I found my own little rock and I placed it on a pile and I don't know if I actually fell down to my knees at that moment, but I know that there were tears coming from my eyes and what I felt at that moment was not Thoreau's presence and it wasn't the cabin, the presence of the cabin site. I felt connected, oh, I even feel the emotion in my voice around it. I felt connected to all the other people who were inspired by his writing. That feeling of community, of being surrounded by the intentions of the kindred spirits who came before me, is the most memorable experience of that moment for me.
Jeffrey C.:Yeah, and I don't mean to denigrate that experience, because I mean, as I said, I did it also.
Shannon W.:But it was about his writing. It wasn't about. It was about his writing and his inspiration and the people. It wasn't about that one spot, right, right and it's.
Jeffrey C.:It was a woman who wrote her dissertation on Walden as a pilgrimage site, as a sacred site. Oh, my and you know, interviewed people and all that.
Shannon W.:I wasn't nearly as original as I thought I was.
Jeffrey C.:No, but it's absolutely true. I mean, I think what you're saying is absolutely true, that not only are you connecting to Thoreau, you're connecting to all the thousands and thousands of pilgrims literary pilgrims who came to that site because it's important to them as some kind of sacred site or something symbolic or meaningful to them and their lives. And Walden Pond, and particularly where Thoreau lived, at that house there, that particular site is very, very meaningful and powerful and, yeah, it does bring tears to people's eyes.
Jeffrey C.:And you were one of the many who got the privilege, basically, of getting to stand there. Not everybody can make it there, but yeah, it's an amazing experience.
Shannon W.:Yeah, absolutely, and I do feel quite privileged and I'm glad I'm not the only one. I'm glad there are thousands and thousands, and thousands who feel the same way that I do and have picked up on that same spirit.
Shannon W.:I would love to talk about Walden while we have some time left. I don't see how we could possibly talk without talking about Walden while we have some time left. I don't see how we could possibly talk without talking about Walden, thoreau's best known work and this account of his experiment living for two years in his cabin at Walden Pond. There are a few things I would like to ask. I think I just want to start with this one right here, which is that Thoreau's time at his cabin in the woods and living a simple life close to nature. It's become almost mythical in modern parlance as this thing that we could do but we can't do so, in other words, as this idealistic opportunity that Thoreau had idealistic and worked well for him, but not necessarily realistic.
Shannon W.:So I've heard from people over the years, when I mention how much a Thoreau geek I am, say, oh, but he just went and lived in the cabin in the woods and that's not something that we can do, and the vast majority of us we know we have to actually make money, et cetera, et cetera. So when I hear those comments, I hear the truth in them, I understand where they're coming from, but I also feel sad because I think there's so much more in that work and in what Thoreau wanted to share with it. I just hope people don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, well, just because I can't go and live in a cabin in the woods means I can't do what he did. And there's so much of what he did that we can do that doesn't require a cabin in the woods. So I just wonder if you would speak to that for a moment. What is the answer to someone who wants to?
Shannon W.:write him off as the escapist in the cabin. Yeah.
Jeffrey C.:So, gosh, my head goes in multiple directions with that kind of question. But there's a sense that he went off because of how he mythologized the work and how people know about it but haven't read it. So Thoreau went for a particular reason and during that period he is observing the world. He's observing society. How do I live my life in relation to my society? How do I live my life, conduct my life in relation to my church, my government, my friends, my neighbors, my town, my state, any of it? And if you look at Walden as a pilgrimage which some people do, that he went off away from society, down the mountain top, whatever. The only thing, the only thing that makes a pilgrimage relevant is is not the knowledge that this person receives, from whatever source, it's the return. It is returning.
Jeffrey C.:So somebody who goes off onto a mountaintop for knowledge and gets knowledge and dies on the mountaintop complete waste of life. You know so many people consider, you know, think about McCandless and the book Into the Wild and say he was so thorough in he died. And I don't mean to take away from this person's life, but he made mistakes that Thoreau never would have made. And if you can't return from your pilgrimage there's no point to it. So if you look at Walden, he was always planning on coming back. I mean he really came back every single day. But if you want to look at it as he went off for two years, the important part is going off. It's the return. What are you bringing back to society to make society better? And in telling his story through the book Walden, he is telling people things and yes, there is that sense of simplicity what do we need, what do we not need? There's also a sense and this is the message I get from Thoreau, particularly from Walden, most strongly is that sense of deliberation. You know he says I went to the woods to look deliberately. We don't do things deliberately anymore. I mean we don't deliberate on things, we do not think about things, we do things blindly, we do things as a matter of rote, we do things as a matter of habit. So I think if you were to read anyone who's going to read Walden, the one message you want to take away from that is to stop and think about your actions. What do they mean? How do they affect me? How do they affect the person around me? How do they affect the world? That's the theropian question. As I said, we had um, we do these teacher seminars and at one point we were having a discussion I don't know how we got into discussion of organic fruit and is organic fruit better for you or not better for you? And I was talking about you know, I don't think all the medical or scientific evidence is out there whether ingesting an organic strawberry is literally better for your body or not. And one of the teachers looked at me and she said, jeff, this isn't about you. And I said what do you mean? She said it's not about what that strawberry. You know whether it's better or worse for you. If you eat an organic strawberry or you eat a non-organic strawberry, think about the person picking your strawberry. Think about the person who is picking that strawberry in a non-organic field, where it is heavily sprayed with pesticides and insecticides and that picker is breathing that into their lungs, is being absorbed in their skin, it's clinging to the clothes that they are wearing and the life expectancy of that picker is going to be a lot shorter than life expectancy of a strawberry picker in an organic field, the life expectancy of a strawberry picker in an organic field who is not having to succumb to those insecticides and pesticides. So they said it doesn't really matter about the strawberry and you, it matters about the strawberry and the world around you. And it was like, oh my gosh, it's, like it was so eyeopening because it's even then. It's that sense of.
Jeffrey C.:I need to think about it, I need to deliberate on what does it mean when I purchase a strawberry? What does it mean when I purchase a cup of coffee? What does it mean when I do whatever? You know where I buy my shirts and I. I would love to say I do it all the time. I do not, you know it's, but if you do it one time more than you did it last week, it's better than not doing it at all and to think about those things. So it's it's really important to think about what do we need in this world?
Jeffrey C.:Um, there's a movie. It's called ira and abby. It's not a great movie I'm not recommending it, but it's one of those romantic comedies where, in this case, a man and a woman meet under some weird circumstance and then they fall in love, and then, halfway through the movie, one of them says something stupid and they break up, and then, five minutes before the end of the movie, they get back together and live happily ever after, and so the thing that made them fight in the middle of the movie was that ira said to to Abby. He was upset because she didn't have a career, and her answer to him and I'm not quoting, but this was the gist of her stance was I have an apartment, I have clothing, I have food on my table, I have friends, I have a job. What more do I need?
Jeffrey C.:And it was like oh yeah, if you can support yourself, if you can feed yourself or your family, if you can clothe yourself or your family, you can have warmth and apartment, then what else do you need? You don't need all this extra stuff, and it was just a wonderfully Thoreau-themed moment I thought in that film, but it's basically when you read Walden. It is really the question of what do I actually need?
Shannon W.:Listening to you, jeffrey, I just thought of something in a different way than I have before, in a different way than I have before, and that is when you said that Thoreau is asking us to live deliberately, and I thought of the famous quote by him I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front the essential facts of life, see if I could not learn what it had to teach. And not, when came to die, discovered I had not lived Right and the part that has always sat with me is the last and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. And there's something in that that is suggesting live your life deliberately so that when you come to die, you don't discover that you wasted your life. It's so powerful.
Jeffrey C.:Absolutely.
Shannon W.:Yeah, and yet what you were just saying takes that to, I think, a different place, which is the focus less on when I came to die, and the focus more on I wished to live deliberately, that we can live deliberately in all of our moments.
Shannon W.:That, in fact, I would say our culture. Right now, with our bucket lists and our 1,000 things to do before you die, it makes sense that we would look and say, oh well, I don't want to die and come to discover that I had not lived, but we might be skipping over that deliberate living part, right, and that in the rush to maybe do more, be more, see more, live more, we may actually not only be missing the deliberate living, but we may be making choices, decisions and taking actions that are actually damaging to life. So I really appreciate the way that you just laid that out and unpacked that a bit to look at Again. He wrote this in a different time and he wrote it in a time when I don't know that he would have meant it in the way of don't forget to check off all of the items on your bucket list. He was saying something very different.
Jeffrey C.:Yeah, I mean I look at it like the idea of having no regrets when you come to die, which is something Thoreau clearly said to somebody who asked him that he had no regrets. I think if you try, I mean all we can do is try. I mean he said I wish to. He didn't say I lived deliberately. He said I wish to live deliberately. Very clear, this is a desire. I think if you spend each day doing the best you can to live in a deliberate way and not cause harm and do the best you can for yourself and the people around you, and yeah, you're going to get to that point, whenever it may be, where you can hopefully say you have no regrets when you're on your deathbed no, I did the best I could do. It's just a wonderful thing to be able to say.
Shannon W.:And the fact that he actually said it and believed it and believed it, that he achieved that. I hate to even call it an achievement because, again, we're so achievement focused, but that he made it, he made it, he lived that life that he wanted to live to the extent that he could die with no regrets. And if there's anything to recommend I'd say in his life is the deliberate living that he did led him to that place of peace.
Jeffrey C.:Absolutely yes, Right yeah. He died, accepting his fate. He knew he was dying from tuberculosis and he accepted that. That was just part of it, his faith. He knew he was dying from tuberculosis and he accepted that. I mean, that was just part of it. So there's, there's a not a resignation, but an acceptance of each part of what makes a life, including the death. Including the death, and he was young, was he?
Shannon W.:44? So young, and yet was able to accept that with grace, grace and peace. So much respect to that man and his well, maybe the man, maybe his writings, whatever it is we're respecting there's really something beautiful. There's something there. There's something there, jeffrey, is there anything else that you would like to share? We're winding up our time. I want to give you an opportunity to share any last thoughts you might have. I want to give you an opportunity to share any last thoughts you might have the only thing I might want to share is and I get this question.
Jeffrey C.:A lot is like what is your favorite thorough quotation? And I'm not good at quoting, but over the years I realized that there was one quotation that absolutely became my favorite thorough quotation for a very particular reason, and he said it in his first book, a Week on the Concord of American Rivers. He said in his journal he said if I am not I, who will be? And I love that, and particularly when I talk to student groups, the idea that we spend so much of our time and I remind students that this isn't just something you do when you're a child or a teenager, we do it as adults too. We so much want to be accepted that we do tend to hide away in many ways who we are, what we are, what we believe in. Um, you know, whatever it is about us that there are certain things like oh, that might not be quite as accepted as I would like. So I'm going to just ignore the fact that I am this, that or whatever.
Jeffrey C.:I love the fact that thorough is saying that we are each of us very unique individuals and that nobody can be us, nobody can be you but you, nobody can be I, but me, and so you haven't.
Jeffrey C.:Basically, you have an obligation to make sure that who you are and what you are is is just out there and and important, and you don't want to be accepted by people who don't accept you for what you are. So so be who you are. If I am not I, who will be? And I and I half joke about this but say, like, if every school in this country had that emblazoned over the front door of the school and every student read that sentence every single day of their school lives, from when they're six or seven, whenever people start school, to when they graduate, could you imagine what that would mean? I mean just the confidence that it would instill to be able, as you walk through that door, to go if I am not I, who will be? I'm going to be me today, I'm going to be me today, and I don't care what anybody else says, I'm going to be me. And it could just change the world. I mean if every student read that every single day of their lives, basically while they're young.
Shannon W.:Because so that has become my favorite thorough quotation, so I just wanted to share that because I think that, of almost all the things that are said is such an incredibly important sentence thank you for that and such an important sense of self to instill within ourselves and his related to his message of urging people to think for ourselves, and in order to think for ourselves, we need to be confident and comfortable and happy with who we are exactly excellent. Thank you so much for sharing that quote. Um, where can people find you, jeff, to learn more about you or your work?
Jeffrey C.:So I have a website wwwjeffreyskramercom. You can reach me there. I can also reach through the Walden Witch Project. So wwwwaldenorg and there's a contact place, but my website would be the easiest. Dot Baldwinorg and there's a contact place, but my website would be the easiest.
Shannon W.:Okay, excellent, and I will add that information into the show notes as well. Jeffrey, it has been such a pleasure talking with you.
Jeffrey C.:Thank you, it's been great.
Shannon W.:You are truly an ambassador for Thoreau I want to say his home and his legacy.
Jeffrey C.:So thank you for all you do to work hard to share his legacy with the rest of us.
Shannon W.:Thank you. That's it for this episode of the Wake Up Human podcast. To learn more about my guest, jeffrey Kramer, visit his website at jeffreyskramercom. To learn more about the Walden Woods Project, visit their website at waldenorg. And to learn more about me and the Wake Up Human podcast, visit my website at shannonwillscom. If you liked this episode and know someone who might benefit from listening, please share it with them. This podcast is a labor of love for me and I'm thrilled if this work can be helpful or inspiring to someone else. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.