Looking for the important time
The American writer, Thoreau, lived for two years in the woods. ‘I went into the woods’, he says, ‘to confront the essential facts of life, lest when I come to die I should discover that I had not lived.
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, often I did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of head or hand. I love a broad margin to my life.
Sometimes on a summer morning, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a reverie, amid the pines, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around me.
I grew in those seasons like corn in the night. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?’
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