If I am not I

 

“If I am not I, who will be?” Philosopher Thoreau wondered. Didn’t he like himself? I wonder. Who likes himself? I ask myself with a chuckle. I don’t, at least. I never did. It’s bad strategy to admit that so loud, I know. Even if you detest yourself, never admit it openly. No one likes people who pity themselves. Self-pity destroys everything except the pathetic self. It’s better to follow the example of Thoreau and move to your private Walden and live your life as you like. People thought that Thoreau was a hypocrite because he supposedly severed ties with society and yet visited the town when he liked and visited his mother “for pie and laundry service” (Eric Weiner’s phrase).

The truth is that Thoreau had never claimed that he hated society and hence wanted solitude. Thoreau, like most good people, had a fair share of crankiness. That doesn’t make him a hypocrite. In fact, he was quite a good guy whom many people didn’t understand in his time. He was a philosopher. And there is no philosophy without crankiness. Only a philosopher with Thoreau’s DNA could write in his journal, “I never know, and shall never know, a worse man than myself.”

Dear Henry David Thoreau, when I read such lines from your journals, I feel I am your twin. I don’t possess your philosophical acumen. But your awareness of your own worth with a self-lacerating vulnerability stirs my soul indomitably. I know what that vulnerability meant to you. I live that vulnerability, don’t I? I have created my own Walden, like you. I know I lack the keenness of your perception and thinking. But I can’t be you, you know. If I am not I, who will be?

This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon. This is the last in this series.