Finding old notes

 Moves across the country are filled with broken vases, lost keepsakes and smashed fingers. But there are some small pleasures, such as finding notes not seen in 40 years. Reading them was like looking in the mirror and seeing a 20-something version of myself.

The notes were on Hazlitt’s essay “On Living to One’s-Self.”

The essay is an argument for the idea that it’s better to live as a spectator in the world, rather than being an active part of it. It’s better to cultivate the private pleasures that nature gives all of us, rather than pursue the uncertain goals of the crowd.

Or so it seemed to the young version of me.

My ambition at the time was to be a reporter for small-town newspapers. I wanted to learn about people. I reported on all kinds of things — boring government meetings and almost unbelievable scandals. I covered shootouts, train wrecks, murder trials and those eccentric characters that give small towns their flavor.

I reported, but left the judgments to others. And, like Hazlitt, I claimed to walk lightly on the earth. I lived simply and moved around without much effort. In those days, all my possessions fit into a Chevrolet pickup truck.

Later on, I would edit a newspaper in a community that followed the news. It was a wildly different life. The newspaper was in the middle of everything. And so whoever was its editor lived a public life. When I’d go to the store, I’d have a conversation about the bond issue in produce, the political endorsements in dairy, and the shocking lack of detailed Little League coverage in canned goods.

In a way, I never got comfortable with that. But looking over those old notes, I can see a young man who couldn’t imagine ever getting comfortable with that.

• Source: William Hazlitt, “On Living to One’s-Self.” My old notes say I found it in A Century of English Essays: From Caxton to Belloc, edited by Ernest Rhys and Lloyd Vaughan; New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1951.