Working at home

"'Walden is a book about a house, a simple one on a pond, but also a not-so-simple one, a disordered one, orbiting the Sun.'

Instead of bank accounts and stock portfolios, the economy was meant to support the cultivation and maintenance of a home, in its most intimate and edifying sense: the ability to dwell in the world as a flourishing human being. Now, at this point, we can imagine the objections: “My bank account does support my home and my ability to flourish.”

But the objection misses Thoreau’s point: a job might fill your bank account and allow you to pay your mortgage and to go on three-day vacations every three months, but it might also squander the majority of your life, even deform your life, a life that seems better spent in the deliberate fashioning of a good home. Take this as literally or as figuratively, as broadly or as narrowly, as you like. It is true in any case. Thoreau believed that a certain type of work allows us to inhabit the world in a way that makes us feel, makes us actually, “at home.” That is the goal of Thoreau’s economy."

"Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living": https://a.co/9w03NHI