Walden; or, Life in the Woods

     Reading this excerpt by Henry David Thoreau was genuinely very interesting to me. I've grown up in such a fast paced society and I am now immersed in a technologically advanced world, so many of the concepts that Thoreau discussed were somewhat foreign. A large focus of this excerpt was on the house in the woods that Thoreau built himself, which is meaningful on a lot of levels. He initially decided to venture into the woods because he wanted to experience the true beauty of life and of the world, as well as solitude. On page 19 he says, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when i came to die, discover that I had not lived." I think taking on  this task is courageous and admirable because it seems that few people experience what it is to really live. There is a part where Thoreau says that when he had to do his cooking outside and there was a storm he would sit under some boards and watch his loaf of bread bake. He would sit there for hours enjoying the moment, not reading or knitting, nothing to distract him. I have led such a fast paced life, it took me aback to think about simply sitting and doing nothing but thinking. It sounds like his time in the woods was life altering because it showed him many things that ,today, most humans never allow themselves to see.                              
    In "Walden; or, Life in the Woods" Thoreau also talks about college education. His theory maintains that college students are not getting an education by merely reading and talking about topics, they are lacking the one thing that truly teaches; experience. "I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?" I have thought about this before in regards to college. I wonder if we should be paying all this money to prepare ourselves for the "real world" when we could be actually living in it. I think Thoreau has found the real meaning to life; simplicity. It is something that a lot of people currently have no appreciation for.