"That's all very well, but don't you often get bored?" asked a
sceptic. "I enjoy a weekend in the country, or a good Sunday tramp in
Richmond Park or Epping Forest. I take my month on the Yorkshire moors
with pleasure, or I spend a season in Switzerland or Spain, and I
don't mind sleeping under a bush and eating whatever I can get in
shepherds' cottages. I can well appreciate the simple life and the
country life, but I'm perfectly sure I should pine away if I had to
live it always. I couldn't stand it. I'd rather be debarred from the
country altogether than not go back to town. The town is much more
indispensable to me. I feel the country life is very good in so far as
it makes one stronger and fitter to work in town again, but as an end
in itself it would be intolerable."
This was a question I needed to answer not only to the sceptic but to
myself. It is true the wanderer often feels bored, even in beautiful
places. I am bored some days every year, no matter where I spend them,
and I shall always be. I get tired of this world and want another.
That is a common feeling, if not often analysed.
There is, however, another boredom, that of the weariness of the body,
or its satiety of country air; the longing for the pleasures of the
town, the tides of the soul attracted by the moon of habit. The tramp
also confesses to that boredom. But when he gets back to the town to
enjoy it for a while he swiftly finds it much more boring than the
country.
If every one went to the country and lived the simple life when he was
inclined, the size of European towns would be diminished to very small
proportions. The evil of a town is that it establishes a tyranny and
keeps its people against the people's true desires.
I said to my sceptical friend: "Those who praise the simple life and
those who scoff at it are both very extravagant as a rule. Let the
matter be stated temperately. The tramp does not want a world of
tramps--that would never do. The tramps--better call them the rebels
against modern life--are perhaps only the first searchers for new
life. They know themselves as necessarily only a few, the pioneers.
Let the townsman give the simple life its place. Every one will
benefit by a little more simplicity, and a little more living in
communion with Nature, a little more of the country. I say, 'Come to
Nature altogether,' but I am necessarily misunderstood by those who
feel quickly bored. Good advice for all people is this--live the
simple life as much as you can _till you're bored_. Some people are
soon bored: others never are. Whoever has known Nature once and loved
her will return again to her. Love to her becomes more and more."
But whoever has resolved the common illusions of the meaning of life,
and has seen even in glimpses the naked mystery of our being, finds
that he absolutely must live in the world which is outside city walls.
He wants to explore this desert island in space, and with it to
explore the unending significance of his deathless spirit.