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But brave is the high school English teacher who would make Walden required reading for his class. In some ways, that reticence is understandable. Walden may be too rich a feast for young men and women who've grown up in a fast-food culture of Stephen King novels, video games, and Hollywood schlock. Nothing "happens" in Walden. The language is soaked in the imagery of the ancient Greeks, who are also often considered too "difficult" for students. Thoreau's absence from even advanced-placement courses is understandable, in the sad way most cultural degeneration is.
But why pick on high school kids or their teachers? How many adults do you know who've read more than what you'll find in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations? Look at the back pages of this magazine. You'll find page after page of "spiritual" help. All kinds of practices promising peace and relaxation and improvement. Self-improvement, as it is usually called. Thoreau was mightily concerned with the self, with its discovery and development. As practical as a meditation mat or a Pilates machine.
Let me give you a quick example of the man's insight, his essential ability to go to the heart of what he describes—in this case, waking up at Walden Pond:
Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito, making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that sang of fame. It was Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it, a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air—to a higher life than we fell asleep from....
That's just a tiny piece of the gold this man mined in his writings. Maybe 150 words. How did it strike you? I'm willing to bet a number of you could hardly wait till it was over. Why? Because, for one ostensible "reason" or another, you found yourself disliking the passage.
It was too wordy. Its metaphors too obscure. It was confusing. It was antiquated, corny, obscure.
You were bored.
Or maybe you found yourself liking the passage. You caught its rhythms, enjoyed its classical metaphors, marveled at its insights.
You were enthralled.
But how is that different from being bored with it? Aren't they—like and dislike—two sides of the same coin? It's the way we usually view the world, for a myriad of seeming reasons. Do I like what I'm reading or don't I? Am I interested? Do I like what that person is saying about me or don't I? Do I like that person? Do I dislike him? Everything rides on like or dislike. If we don't like something or someone, we turn our backs to it. We dismiss it, or him or her. And that's unfortunate, because in doing that, we turn our backs on ourselves.
If you don't like something or someone, and you conduct your life accordingly, that puts you in the position of not being able to place your attention where it needs to be, because if you're ruled by your likes and dislikes, you can't keep your attention where it may need to be. And if you can't control your attention, you won't be able to control your life.
Here's an example: You meet someone who has an unpleasant, screechy voice. They're saying something to you. If you can get beyond whether you like or dislike their voice, you might be able to hear what they have to say, and it may be of tremendous significance to you.
It works the same way for someone who has a mellifluous, beautiful voice. You don't have to be hypnotized by how they say a thing because you can just listen. You're not taken in. You can determine if there's something truthful lurking beneath all the honeyed words, the graceful rhythms, the eloquence.
It's the same with flattery and blame. Someone says a few words of praise and we melt away. Or someone blames us for something and we fall to pieces. It's the same thing. We're either in a puddle or a pile of jagged fragments.
But if you can direct your attention, you are not in that mechanical realm of like or dislike. Someone can blame you and you can listen to the blame. They can be mad—you did thus-and-such-and-thus-and-such—and you can listen and see whether what they're saying is true. It doesn't matter if they're angry—their anger doesn't affect you. You're free to see the veracity of what they're saying, and to proceed from there.
It works the same way for flatterers. A person comes on to you, saying how wonderful you are, how sweet, how beautiful— whatever. Instead of being lulled to sleep and buying that ridiculous SUV or marrying that sweet-talking ape, you can actually see through them. Maybe there's a reason to buy a bloated land-yacht or to marry that fool you dated in high school, but if there is, you'll want to hear it and not be swayed by sweet words.
So it doesn't really matter whether you like or dislike Henry David Thoreau and what he wrote. If you can suspend your usual way of treating most everything, you'll be able to see what there is to find in Thoreau. He was, after all, the kind of guy who didn't care if you liked him or not, and that may have been one of his greatest secrets—it opened the door and the windows of that famous cabin on the pond, and let untold riches enter.