This quote is a beauty, and good article. One of my faves, direct from the man himself:
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
I don’t idolize Thoreau. I found him pretty airy. But he has a few good nuggets, and what I liked about him most from my youth was his hands-on approach to rigging up his life. Just trying stuff. And then my friend came along and showed me all his contraptions to deal with country life. So, I picked it up.
When I renovated my laundry room, I still had laundry to do, so I put the washer and dryer outside and ran an extension cord and the garden hose. Another friend remarked, why that is a very yankee solution to that problem.
Another year, after carrying wood manually in through the back door and getting wood bits everywhere, I had had enough. So I cut a 12x14 inch hole in the back of my house with a sawzall, made a little latching door, and built a ramp to the wood pile in the utility closet. No more wood bits in the living room. Simply shove all the wood in the hole at the back of the house. And other such riggings. No need to get all airy about it.
When life hands you massive struggle, use your mind to come up with ways to be lazy, so there’s more time for the fun stuff like wasting it on Facebook and BB BBS.
