the problem with being wild and free — one of mr thoreau's most famous lines and one i (qualifiedly) love and understand his meaning for — was the same problem for mr thoreau that the libertarians have; they never talk about competing freedoms. in mr thoreau's life he courted one woman ardently, but in the end, unsuccessfully. he wanted nothing more than to share his life with her, wildly and freely. she apparently wanted nothing of the kind. so yes, he felt free to court her, but no, he was not free to love her wildly and freely, and even loving her for the rest of his life — which he probably did — was not the thing he was after and may even have been worse for him than never having loved her at all. she, on the other hand, wanted a life without his love and she got it.
freedoms always compete. in the end, very often that equates with one person having a particular freedom at the expense of another's. we do not act. we interact. we take our chances. and we are sometimes barred from exercising the most poignant freedom there is, the freedom to love another, to share love with another, wildly and freely.
WHAT THE MAN IS
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