October 18 over 151 Years

Thursday, October 18, 2001
Another rainy day, complemented by driving wind.The tree leaves are being stripped and flung afar! Hopefully the strong wind bodes well for a weather change later, with rain diminishing. A good day, at present, to sit close to home - inside.
Below is an October 18, 1856 journal entry by Henry David Thoreau that strikes a deep chord of sympathy from me, a kindred feeling across the ages. It is of man's usual absorption of interest in man alone. The theme of life is upon man's back; not the theme of life being all of life, but how an aspect of life relates only to men.
The majority of society can consider a movie star or sports figure noteworthy of their full attention and yet the natural world, which sustains our life, is only noted when it relates to man. People will all slaver after the newest consumer device, be it an "i-device", automobile or a new garment while a simple life is is not even considered as relevant. A materialistic existence with posh comfort and insulation from the natural environment, from which we are derived, leaves us self-centered. Our government at this late date begins to acknowledge the global destruction wrought by climate change and the sure effect of spewing carbon dioxide from petroleum into the atmosphere. We are all accessories to the rampant industrial materialism that is spreading on this planet. I don't see an end in sight other than the planet continuing to degrade. Only through a lifestyle change, by all or at least most, will we stave off the worst of global climate change. The carbon loading is like a massive train that is gathering speed and is soon to be runaway. A fundamentalist Christian that I know, Mike, believes that Al Gore and others of his ilk are all tools of Satan, who are diverting people away from being saved by Christ who will come again and establish a perfect world anyway. So those in the Gore camp are all just trying to postpone the inevitable end of the world. So let people live like drunken brides and industry burgeon further in this fallen and depraved world...
Mike says that the sailboat that he and his wife plan to sail around the seas, ministering to others will encounter less islands since many have been inundated by flooding from melting ice caps, but he must keep focused on Christ, because this world is just passing anyway...

Be all the above as it may be, below is Thoreau. To him, Nature is "the only real elysium" and "the life is everything." Thanks be to a sane voice in the babble:

"Men commonly exaggerate the theme. Some themes they think are significant and others insignificant. I feel that my life is very homely, my pleasures very cheap. Joy and sorrow, success and failure, grandeur and meanness, and indeed most words in the English language do not mean for me what they do for my neighbors. I see that my neighbors look with compassion on me, that they think it is a mean and unfortunate destiny which makes me to walk in these fields and woods so much and sail on this river alone. But as long as I find here the only real elysium, I cannot hesitate in my choice. My work is writing, and I do not hesitate, though I know that no subject is too trivial for me, tried by ordinary standards; for, ye fools, the theme is nothing, the life is everything. All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited. We touch our subject but by a point which has no breadth, but the pyramid of our experience, or our interest in it, rests on us by a broader or narrower base. That is, man is all in all. Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him. Give me simple, cheap, and homely themes." H.D. Thoreau, 10/18/1856