Thoreau's Life

To Live Deliberately “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” Henry David Thoreau explains the importance of living in the moment and taking the most out of life. As I examined this excerpt from Thoreau's book Walden, questions arose: was I sucking the marrow out of life? Was I spending my time on earth as fully as I wanted to? I began to think about how short life actually was. Who would have thought that when those dare-devil millennials were on to something when they coined the term YOLO, or You Only Live Once? An average person only lives 75 years, and while that may seem like plenty of time to seek out one’s innermost desires, compared to the life of earth, who celebrates her 4.5 billionth birthday this year, our time frame is infinitesimal. The poem To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick, teaches the importance of living one’s life to its fullest before one becomes too old, because life is short. After reading this poem, I was hit with a wave of realization that I needed to accomplish something and be remembered for something before my short time on earth is complete. At first, I did not believe this poem would be any value to me. When Mr. Scirocco assigned To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick, I had to drag myself to read and annotate it, but I am delighted that I did. The …show more content…
Time passes too quickly to waste it taking the easy route and risklessly letting the world hold you back. I do not want to live with the regret of not accomplishing my goals, because life is short and you only live once. As Mr. Scirocco put it, “I do not want to get to the bottom of the ice cream bowl, then realize I did not taste it.” Likewise, with the rate at which time flies, I do not to die, then realize I did not live