What's Your Purpose?

“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 thought it was extremely ironic when I went to read the prompt and instructions for this week’s blog because I had already highlighted this passage from Thoreau’s Walden as something I wanted to elaborate on in this week’s post. When I first read this line, my thoughts were immediately directed to one of my favorite movies of all time, Hitch. Now, Will Smith has plenty of great quotes in the movie that I have memorized, as embarrassing as it may sound. However, the one that was brought to my attention reads as follows: “Like I always tell my clients - begin each day as if it were on purpose.” I felt like this quote and the one from Thoreau essentially went hand-in-hand. Thoreau secluded himself in that one-room cabin in the woods for one reason; he wanted to live his life deliberately. He wanted to live his life as if it were on purpose. Two completely different time periods; two completely different people; one common idea.

Part of Thoreau’s quote above is about fronting “only the essential facts of life.” So, the question is raised, what are the essential facts? I’m not sure that there’s really a “right” or “wrong” answer to the question. Yet, I think that a good example of one of these essential facts may be love, which is where I was able to find a connection between the quotes. Since the movie is about love and relationships, I can only assume that “Hitch” is talking about living your love life as if it were on purpose, because love is something that no one can take away from you. It’s not something physical, it’s an emotion; it’s a feeling. I think that when Thoreau took his trip into the woods, he was taking a stab at trying to realize this, not just about love, but also about all the things that TRULY matter in life. I think he wanted to get away from all the “physical” barriers that were keeping him from living life with a purpose. I think he was trying to reconnect with the things in life that only he could control. It makes sense when you think about it, or at least it does to me. For example, no matter what religion you practice, no matter what you believe in, I think that it’s pretty fair to say that our “purpose” in life isn’t to go to work every day, dreading it, just so we can make money to support ourselves and family. Our purpose is to enjoy life and be happy. Even if that means being happy when we have absolutely nothing. So, I think that what Thoreau meant by the last part of his quote above was that he didn’t want to die some day feeling like he “went through the motions.” He wanted to fee himself from all the things that make “going through the motions” easy: cars, television, computers, ect.

I definitely give Thoreau props for doing what he did. He didn’t just notice that he was conforming to a society that he didn’t want to be a part of and just accept it. He actually made a change. He acted on it. He did something that we ALL need to do if we truly fear what we say we do. Whether that’s a world relating to the one displayed in Feed or, likewise, what Bauerlein may call "increasingly dumb” generations.