Peace Is Every Red Light

I was very impressed by Thich Nhat Hanh's work Peace Is Every Step.  I never really attached to Eastern thought and tradition as much as Western, so I was surprised when I thoroughly enjoyed the book.  I'll admit that I underestimated the book.  Before I began reading, I thought it would be outdated and irrelevant.  I was glad to find out that I was completely wrong.

One of the things that really hit home for me was the idea of finding happiness in things that occur to you multiple times everyday.  The most interesting one I thought was the red light.  How often do we find happiness while waiting at red lights?  Never.  Why should we find happiness there?  The red light is impeding our progress.  It is halting us from living our life.  Thich Nhat Hanh proposed a different way of viewing the red light.  By seeing it as an opportunity to find happiness, it transforms the frustration into something else.  We remember to live in the moment, and find contentment in every moment.  Since I read the work, I've been seeing the red light as not only telling me to stop my car from going through the intersection, but also as stopping my mind, and just being peaceful in the moment.  It definitely makes my drives a little easier.

There are tons of "red lights" in our life.  Any thing that we might be frustrated at, or get stressed over, or angry at, we can turn into a moment of happiness.  We missed the bus or an important call, or maybe our laptop ran out of battery.  Anything that maybe gets in the way, or holds us up for a short time from something else, we can look at in a different way.  I'd invite everyone to find one thing, and for a day, just try to live it out.  Watch, and feel, how much it helps.

Thoreau's Experiment

Thoreau believed that we all live in a slave economy.  Everybody is too busy working hard to really enjoy themselves.  He believed that he has found the key to happiness by working only as much as needed.  Through his experiment, he had "proven" that it is possible to live both happily and simply.  However, I believe Thoreau needs to do a few more tests.  Here are a few ways that I thought Thoreau's experiment fell a little short.

Thoreau only had to provide for himself.  I would have like to have seen the results of the experiment if he had to feed a family.  In 1845, the average size of an American family was five people.  I wonder how this would have affected Thoreau's experiment.  At what age would he have had the children work in the field with him?  How much more work, if any, would he have had to do?

Also, Thoreau only lived along Walden Pond for two years.  I wonder if he could have sustained his lifestyle had he stayed there for a much longer time.  I mean this in two ways.  The first is: Could he have physically been able to sustain it?  Would it be possible for an elderly man to do everything Thoreau had to do?  Building and repairing the house, planting and harvesting crops.  These are all physically taxing labors, and one wonders at what age Thoreau would have been incapable of doing them.  The second way I mean the question is:  Would Thoreau have continued to be happy?  From his work, I get the sense that he could have, but I still would have liked to see how his reflections on his time at Walden Pond would have differed had he spent two decades there rather than two years.

I do not think that the lack of answers for these questions take away from Thoreau’s work.  I do not think they sound the death knoll for Thoreau’s thoughts.  Although Thoreau provided a conclusion to his work, I do not think he wanted to end it definitively.  He wanted us to stand up and think for ourselves, which is exactly what asking these questions does.  Were I to pose these questions to Thoreau himself, I think he would invite me to perform my own experiment.  Perhaps then, just as he did, I would discover the answers, and many others, for myself.

An Apology

I've been lagging in my blog for a while now.  I felt more inspired with earlier works, and I guess Gracian and Montaigne didn't really get me that excited.  I'm not sure why exactly.

However, our reading of Thoreau has resonated with me, in both positive and negative ways.  I struggle to think of another work that I have felt such mixed feelings about.

After I formulate some more cohesive thoughts on Thoreau I will return and write blogs with a little more substance than this one.

I am truly sorry that I have neglected my blog for so long.  I promise my readers it will not happen again.