|
In WALDEN ; or Life in the Woods
the American naturalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote: "If a man does
not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears the beat of a
different drummer." Thoreau himself had most certainly heard that beat because
for a while he quit whatever little he had lived of mainstream life to retire
into a pastoral existence for a couple of years. For him it was not an
experiment advocating hermitage in a forest. Rather, he moved to a small
self-built house on land in a semi-wooded area which was not in wilderness but
at the edge of town, not even too far from friends and family. The idea was to
isolate himself from society in order to gain a more objective understanding of
it. It was, in fact, his middle way.
But what exactly is the beat of a
different drum ? Who can hear it ? And is it difficult to do so ? To answer the
last question first, it's extremely tricky and easier said than done because the
rest of the percussionists who number in the hundreds can easily drown the sound
of the lone beat with a dissimilar rhythm. That they are not capable of totally
obscuring or overwhelming it, though, is borne out by the fact that there are
thousands of people who still manage to hear it anyway. And when they do they
automatically begin to march out of step.
So who are the people who hear it
? You could say they are perhaps the only people who are actually listening.
It's little akin to a continuous off-key note buried somewhere deep inside a
great orchestra playing a grand theme. Most of us who are immersed totally in
the majesty of the symphony don't notice - or even care if we do- the
dissonance. It's too small, too insignificant and, ultimately, too obscure to
matter. But the purist who is in touch with the harmony of the music and,
therefore, listening carefully, hears it. To such a person that one note strikes
a harsh and often fatal discord into the whole. It can permanently rubbish the
performance too.
The thing to remember here,
however, is that the different drummer has no quarrel with the orchestra. He
just doesn't belong in it. Also, not keeping pace with the rest of the lot
doesn't necessarily mean lagging behind; it could also imply moving ahead from
the rest. When Thoreau's aunt Louisa asked him during the last days of his life
when he was dying of tuberculosis if he had made his peace with God, Thoreau
responded quite simply: "I did not know we had ever quarrelled." |
