Quiet Desperation
There are a couple of young guys at work who seem to be inspired by the author of Walden, as far as their beards are concerned, and it creates an unintended connection with me, the former English major. It's not for me to tell these former Aviation Management majors who worked as security guards and now calculate how to split their cable in their six television household. If I said to them, "The majority of men lead lives of quiet desperation," or accused them of being transcendentalists, I'm not sure that they would understand.