"I learned this, at
least, by my experiment [at Walden Pond]; that if one advances confidently in
the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has
imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an
invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to
establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and
interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the
license of a higher order of beings. In
proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less
complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness
weakness. If you have built castles in
the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” (Walden
323-324)
In late March 1845, Henry David Thoreau retreated from “civilized”
society to escape to Walden Pond, a sixty-two acre body of water located just
a few miles from his parents’ home in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau later wrote, “I went to the woods
because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of
life, and see if I could not learn from what it had to teach, and not, when I
came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
(Walden, 90). The beauty of Walden, is that from Thoreau’s simple challenge came forth
a tremendously complex reflection, complete with examples ranging from ants to
antiquity. Scholars have said, “Walden stubbornly refused to constrain itself to a single genre, a single
argument, even a single meaning per word.”[1] To me, this sounds an awful like
weightlifting, i.e. snatch and clean
and jerk, a sport that places a doctrine of rugged individualism over all else.
My own retreats to the weightlifting platform and squat rack
serve a similar purpose, for they both cleanse my soul and keep me tethered to what
is really important in life – hard work, accountability, humility, and a willingness
to embrace difficult challenges. Coming to
understand and appreciate these lessons has not only made me a more
accomplished weightlifter, but also a better husband, brother, friend and co-worker. The best advice I can offer anyone –
weightlifter or layman, alike – is do not bask in the glow of yesterday’s
results; eliminate the past tense from your vocabulary and focus solely on the
present. Strive to make the next rep
better than the last. Tunnel
vision. Horse blinders. Whatever analogy works for you. Keep your mind sharp and your feet fast.
Let’s retreat now to our wooden shanties, load up a barbell with a 120 kilos,
and pull the hell out of it. We might make it, we might miss it, but in the end, irrespective of the result, we
will have learned something new about ourselves.
