Reaquainting …
…myself with an old friend.
My sixteen year old is taking an American Lit. class this year. Instead of buying a program, I’m basically writing one, combining what I had in high school and college. While making tomorrow’s assignment, I realized I had yet to expose the poor boy to one of my favorite American writers — Henry David Thoreau.
Anyone who knows me should not be expressing any surprise at this point. But after re-reading “Civil Disobedience” for the first time in years, I smiled inside, knowing this man influenced my youth in ways I’d forgotten. Let me share some quotes from this amazing essay:
“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is strongest. What force is a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?”
“Statesmen and legislators (or anyone in positions of “power”) standing so completely within the institution never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but have not resting place without it. They may be men of certain experience and discrimination, and have not doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are want to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency…”
“There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived and treats him accordingly.”
There were many more highlighted, but it’s far too late in the evening to write them all. Suffice it to say that the person I am comes from a long heritage of “civil disobedience,” and sometimes I forget that. I think I am come of late to the winds of change, but that’s just not true. Sometimes, I need to remember “old friends” who speak from my past, telling me I have been groomed for “such a time as this.” Melodramatic? Maybe. But somehow, it gives me reassurance deep inside that the person I am has been a long time in coming.
That’s who it was that I quoted in my ATC card!!
“Time is but the stream I go a fishing in.”
So, are you reaquainting yourself with you?
Wow … there’s a loaded question …