Borrell, Escaping the Critics, 1874
To live sincerely is to live your own life, not your father's life or your mother's life or your neighbor's life; to spend soul on large concerns, not to waste your life as a kind of human ant carrying around small burdens; and finally, to live sincerely is to "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life," as Thoreau declares in Walden. That may require unsociability. Thoreau noticed that at a certain age boys remain in shadows and corners of rooms, look a little wild, make up their minds about a given grown up in a second, and may come to supper or not. Thoreau values that unsociability in both boys and girls. But those moments soon disappear, replaced by an old anxiety to please.
Robert Bly
To live sincerely is to live your own life, not your father's life or your mother's life or your neighbor's life; to spend soul on large concerns, not to waste your life as a kind of human ant carrying around small burdens; and finally, to live sincerely is to "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life," as Thoreau declares in Walden. That may require unsociability. Thoreau noticed that at a certain age boys remain in shadows and corners of rooms, look a little wild, make up their minds about a given grown up in a second, and may come to supper or not. Thoreau values that unsociability in both boys and girls. But those moments soon disappear, replaced by an old anxiety to please.
Robert Bly
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