The campaign couldn’t be more successful right now. And life is sweet. But I’m a realist. Some have said ‘pessimist,’ but that shows a lack of understanding of me. I think. But how can I expect other people to understand me when it’s only dawning on me at 38 that what I might have once described as sadness or a tendency toward depression is just awareness.
I’m going to die. So are you. So all these accolades and all this success is just great, but it’s not everything. It’s why, I think, I love my cabin so much. It’s small and simple and not necessarily appropriate (1200 km from where I live and tucked in the woods), but I LOVE it. I was thinking about all this today and came upon this quote, written this week 160 years ago by another man with a cabin.
“In the society of many men, or in the midst of what is called success, I find my life of no account, and my spirits rapidly fall. I would rather be the barrenest pasture lying fallow then cursed with the compliments of kings. But when I have only a rustling oak leaf, or the faint metallic cheep of a tree sparrow, for variety in my winter walk, my life becomes continent and sweet as the kernel of a nut. I would rather hear a single shrub oak leaf at the end of a wintry glade rustle of its own accord at my approach, than receive a shipload of stars and garters from the strange kings and peoples of the earth.”
Henry David Thoreau
February 8, 1857
