Our lives today are exceedingly fast-paced. Despite the fact that we continue to purchase technology that makes our lives easier, we also continue to take on more and more responsibilities. It seems like we spend most of our days on mindless or menial tasks that don’t really matter, but they seem “urgent.” It seems like there’s so much to do but so little time. Stress levels have never been higher. For the answer, perhaps we should turn to a time two hundred years ago, a time not unlike ours. 

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” says Henry David Thoreau, 19th century American philosopher. For Thoreau, human life is much too cluttered by things that don’t matter. He expresses particular disdain for the post office — despite the mass of news and communication, very little meaningful things are being said. Because of this lack of meaning, because of the stress and drudgery of life, few people are truly awake anymore. He says, “the millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.” If we are not awake, if we are not alive, then what is the point of life? Our lives are not meant to be so cluttered and meaningless. However, a lot of times we feel trapped in our stress. We think we don’t have the power to change our lives. Thoreau urges us that this is not the case. He believes that we can all “elevate [our lives] by a conscious endeavor.” You can change your life by the power of your mind.

When Thoreau was writing his book, Walden, he withdrew to live in a cabin in the woods. He said that he did this because he wished to “live deliberately.” He wanted to strip away everything unnecessary, to see what life really is at its core, so that he could truly live. He urges us to sift through “the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance,” and firmly ground yourself in this reality.