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When Henry David Thoreau retreated to his self-built cabin on Walden Pond in 1845 to find inner sanctuary and write his memoir adequately entitled Walden, he discovered many truths about life that lead him to become one of the leading founders of the American simplicity movement. Thoreau adamantly believed that simplifying our lives would lead to a greater happiness. Throughout Walden, particularly in the chapter entitled “Where I lived and What I lived For,” Thoreau elucidates societies plight regarding over consumption and greed. He asserts: “Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity! Let it be your affairs be as two or three, and not one hundred or a thousand”. Thoreau claims that the more individuals become consumed with acquiring “more” the further confused and chaotic their lives will become. Individuals who become rapped up in attaining “most of the luxuries, and many so-called comforts of life” so Thoreau writes, will never find true happiness. Thoreau strategically argues that individuals must cultivate themselves not by means of “mechanical aids” but rather by employing nature as their eternal backing. The only path to obtaining true happiness according to Thoreau is by living a life lead by transcendent spirituality and simplifying everyday actions. In a strict sense, all of these points are valid, However, Thoreau goes beyond these points and attempts to patronize anyone who finds happiness in material objects. Many individuals do indeed find happiness in materialistic consumerism and it is only arrogant that Thoreau would label these people as to “live in much hurry and waste of time”. He declares, “I went to the woods because I tried to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could learn what I had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” In view of the fact that there has never been a recorded person who woke from the dead and proclaimed that they “had not lived” a life worth living, there is no absolute rationale to confirm that living a simplistic life leads to bona fide happiness.
Approximate Word count = 1255
Approximate Pages = 5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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