Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI’ve had a life and now I’m done.Have I lost or won?

Self-assessment is such an emotional minefield most folks avoid it. I might too if permitted. But my purpose denies permission. Self-assessment is my assignment. To quail is to fail.

Why this disquiet facing who we’ve been? No other creature, best we know, writhes so at their close.

I finger memory as culprit. We recall who we had in mind – and he was so much more!

Dog-pal Henry dreams – of catching a squirrel, say – what glory! – but he forgets those dreams so they don’t taunt him. He is not forever the dog-who-did-not-catch-the-squirrel as I must be forever the writer-who-didn’t-write-Walden. Regret relies on recollection.

But what planted these dreams in mind? Why Walden, say, and not War and Peace or the Sermon on the Mount? Who sets the benchmarks against which we judge ourselves? I’ve had a few wins in my time – don’t they make me a winner? Why this interminable sighing I wasn’t so-and-so?

No acquaintance would fault me for not making a work to rival Walden. Walden, to most folks, is another book. To me when I met it fifty-plus years ago on a rainy Saturday, alone in a library carrel, it was a dare. “Do this – or die trying.”

Walden tells the story of a man of local promise – a Harvard grad – who quit all to pursue his peculiar calling. Here was heroism:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, wood-lot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door, and what should be cut down. The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

Unpossessed by possessions, caring nothing for seeming or flattering expectations, he would wrestle life one-on-one and report his experience truly. Wow. And could this guy ever write!

Did I have the guts? Not a chance! I was raised to seem, flatter, possess. Not only did I bend my neck to the yoke, I did so gladly. For more years than Thoreau lived, I shooed his sad gaze – but never the sense I was shirking, betraying my gift – a vocation – in favor of a security I did not respect.

It’s an old story, of course. In hindsight, I couldn’t have done otherwise. I had to try my hand at the world and find out how little I knew. Luckily, I lived long enough to recover – partially – from my cowardice, marry the woman of my dreams and write what I might. So I am grateful, yes, but still regretful, haunted by what-if. Win or lose? In my dreams, I rebuke myself. Awake, I settle for a draw.