The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

February 20Child of the Mist

There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist,—and with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist. The person who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of their relation to the lawmaker.

Henry David Thoreau—“Walking” (1861)

Thoreau wrote often about the virtues of life without regard for laws. His essay titled “Civil Disobedience” is an ode to this idea and may rival Walden in the important ideas it contains.

However, Thoreau was not simply clamoring for anarchy and lawlessness; his definition of law included living by the laws of nature governed by one's most inner desires.

We must be our own lawmaker if we are to be truly self-reliant.

Thoreau believed in the Concord of 1862 that fences and divided parcels of “improved” lands drove the natural wildness from us by imposing “laws which bind us where we did not know before that we were bound.”

How do the expectations of others and our own beliefs make us seek to impose laws that we may obey? Do we really have to work this many hours? Do we really need to speak up to demonstrate how smart we are in any situation? Do others have to lose so that we may win?

Thoreau begins the essay “Walking” ...