A Life Worth Living | Teen Ink

A Life Worth Living

December 14, 2010
By rainyday93 GOLD, Bedford, New York
rainyday93 GOLD, Bedford, New York
11 articles 0 photos 8 comments

A sojourn
Not to dip my toes into the shallow pools of society
But a full immersion in the world and all its glory
To clutch the strands of truth through the earth’s body
A body that would teach me all its secrets and show me all its gifts
I will exclude myself from the majority
Preserving the purity of my heart
And letting it pound in cadence with the rhythms of the stream
That runs through the chaste land on which I roam
I will never surrender to the ideals that have been surmised from fallible popularity
But I will learn from the heart of the earth
How to live

For if I simply allow myself to be carried away in the tides of society
My life will be that of no value
I, a mere shell
With a soul that was born into the world
With eyes shut
And died, without every truly seeing
For fear that I will never live
I must look to the earth
For truth cannot be found within humanity
But within the grooves of the earth’s surface

The author's comments:
This is my interpretation of Ralph Waldo Emerson's ideas based on his book, "Walden," and specifically the quote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (72).

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