Most men lead a life of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. In defining this desperation for the masses, Thoreau likely held up a mirror to his own soul. Yet if we observe closely, Thoreau was in the state of quiet angst and severe loneliness — living a life of cynicism. His simplicity was a sanctuary from a society he found abrasive.

Is it a choice or is it a fate? Most men live with the understanding that they are navigating life, yet only a very few understand that life navigates them. If only we made conscious efforts to work through internal thoughts and reflections, we might see the currents pulling us.

Thoreau was pushed to the fate of radical simplicity and detachment from material things. And since his writings are his own perception of reality, it’s fair enough to conclude his reflections and consciousness are equally important to his suffering — as well as his attempt to manage his inner anguish by writing and living a simple life. His journals were more than observations; they were the one place where his internal world and the external world finally hummed in the same key.

He found the song within him, yet had almost no one to sing it to. A Thoreauvian irony.

The man is trying to fly away from the cocoon of himself — a man using nature to escape human nature.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately… and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Yet at death’s door, he may have realized that “deliberate living” was actually a sophisticated way of hiding from one’s own temperaments.

This essay is part of the Isolation v Autonomy series.