Hi, this is AJ again. Welcome to the next lesson. This week's lesson is called "Walden." And we're going to talk about a book with the same name, Walden,

Walden Main Text

Hi, this is AJ again. Welcome to the next lesson. This week's lesson is called "Walden."

And we're going to talk about a book with the same name, Walden, by a writer named

Henry David Thoreau. Now Thoreau is probably my favorite American writer, I guess

maybe my favorite writer in general. He wrote back during the American Civil War, prior

to the American Civil War, and his book Walden is his most famous book. Now it's quite

difficult. There's a lot of big vocabulary in this book. And also the writing style is kind of

old, very, very, very formal English and a little bit of an old style of English. So l'm going

to read one paragraph from the book and then l'll talk about it more. And that paragraph

may be quite difficult for you, but don't worry. I'll explain it after.

Now, Walden, the book, is about an experiment, an experience that Henry David

Thoreau had. He decided to go and live in the woods. Go away from the town where

he was into the woods, into the forest, and then build a very small little simple house

and live in it by himself. And just think and relax and live a very simple life. And then he

wrote a book about this experience. Now, of course, this is something that people have

done for centuries and centuries, holy people, religious people, spiritual people,

philosophers.

In many different periods of history, in many different locations in the world, they've

gone off by themselves to some small remote place away from other people to think, to

live simply. And of course we have a lot of great intellectual breakthroughs from these

people. So it's a long tradition to do this and Henry David Thoreau was following the

same tradition. And it's not a usual thing for Americans, I would say. He was maybe

one of the first Americans to do this and write about it. I'm sure many did it but he wrote

about his experience. And this book is a book about his experience, his experiment, but

more so it's a book about his philosophy, a philosophy of life that he developed while

living in the woods alone.

And the main part of this philosophy is to live simply. That in fact we don't need so

much in terms of things, buying things, getting lots of things. So even at that time in the

United States people were always trying to get more, more, more...bigger, bigger,

bigger house...more, more, more money...more, more, more nice furniture. Just

always buying things and of course today we have more, more, more computers and

iPods and phones and bigger cars and nicer stuff. All the time people want more, more,

more. And he was saying this is a source of unhappiness if you're always trying to get

more and more and more you will never be happy. And so his idea was actually to be

happy with what you need and then focus on doing other things. Instead of always

trying to get more, more, more, live more simply and you will have a lot of time for

yourself. You'll work much less. You'll enjoy your life. So that is the basic philosophy of