Some of my best friends
have been and are misanthropes. Those who dislike the artificial, the
contrivance, the hypocrisy which so often takes the shape of the human form.
Perhaps it is these traits where we find a bonding of sorts. It is nature that
is my true friend; the trees, the lakes, the mountains. It is the solitude that
refreshes the soul. Thoreau celebrated solitude, although in truth, he had many
visitors to that small cabin on Walden Pond.
‘I find it wholesome to
be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is
soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion
that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely
when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking
or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured
by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really
diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as
solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or
the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is
employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone,
at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the
folks," and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate himself for his day's
solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all
night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does
not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his
field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the
same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more
condensed form of it.’ Walden by Henry
Thoreau
These days, the site of
his cabin is marked by a pile of stones left by visitors; those making a
pilgrimage to a place in literary history. I remember eating lunch on the far
side of the pond and a passing train inviting itself to a short passing while I
munched on my sandwich. Thoreau was not a misanthrope however, he simply sought
simplicity and some solitude for the course of some months. As I grow older, I
find myself delighting in a quiet afternoons and evenings away by myself,
keeping to myself, being self-contained. I don’t know if the psychologists
would find this healthy, but what is healthy anyway? Who can say with any
thread of certainty?
