Thoreau writes in Walden:
My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that “for yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for to-morrow, and overhead for the passing day.”
In this passage, Thoreau is comparing the way he lives at Walden Pond to the Puri Indians: both live almost entirely in the present moment. Life is simply the now, with the past and future merely vague concepts. This would lead immediately to a contemplation of his fellow townsmen in Concord and their imagined criticism of his "idleness" because he knows how radically different their concept of time is from his. They...
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live what he calls lives of "quiet desperation." They seldom, if ever, experience the present moment because of the premium they put on keeping busy. They are always looking ahead to what is next on the to-do list, what has to be accomplished in the coming hour, what appointment has to be kept. They are so busy anticipating what needs to be done that they never stop and take a breath to experience the now. Unlike Thoreau, they miss their lives in the rush of hurtling from one commitment to the next.
In imagining his neighbors calling him idle or lazy, Thoreau shows in a light-hearted way that they can't begin to understand the way he is experiencing time at Walden Pond. He is becoming truly aware and alive by living entirely in the present, without worrying about what time it is or what is next on a checklist. This might look idle but it is a vibrant, connected, and observant way of life.
Why do Thoreau's townsmen criticize his idleness in Walden regarding his views on time?
Thoreau has a completely different conception of time from the people of Concord. Whereas their understanding of time is related purely to clock-time, to days of the week, and weeks of the month, his is based upon the natural rhythms of the environment.
And while the townspeople's days are “fretted by the ticking of a clock,” Thoreau can congratulate himself on living according to nature, which allows him to savor the beauties of the world around him, a world that is ordinarily ignored by the townsfolk as they go about their busy lives.
Thoreau lives like the Puri Indians, for whom there is only one word of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. To express the difference between the three temporal states, they simply point backwards for yesterday, forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day.
To the townsfolk of Concord, Thoreau's lifestyle is “sheer idleness” because, like the Puri Indians, he doesn't pay any attention to how the hours go by. Living out in the wilderness has given Thoreau a whole different understanding of time, one that doesn't involve artificially dividing up the day as town-dwellers do.
A more natural existence according to such a conception may appear “sheer idleness” to the townsfolk, but it's perfectly in keeping with how the Puri Indians, as well as the birds and the flowers, live their lives, and Thoreau is only too happy to follow their example.