How to Just Do a Thing

I keep reading books from the 19th century and earlier, fiction and nonfiction, because I envy something about the lives of the people in them. I don’t think I’d want to trade places. I’m too accustomed to hot showers and modern dentistry. But people back then seemed to live with a certain straightforwardness that we don’t have anymore. They could more easily just do a thing, more easily pick a course of action and see it through. Whenever they make a choice, they act on it with more care and conviction that most of us do today. Now I think I know why: regardless of their class, those people had fewer options in every area of life. There were fewer things they could do, fewer things they wanted to do, and fewer things to think about, so they attended more deeply to everything they did. Not fooling around Picture an 18th-century farmer’s son, at thirteen years old. His older brother will inherit the farm, so he needs to think about potential vocations. The family knows a blacksmith and…