Be a Loser - The Philosophy of Henry David Thoreau

this video is sponsored by the self-care app fabulous the first 100 people to click the link in the description will receive 25 off their subscription we want to experience so much in life we can often ignore and neglect the quality of what we actually experience we are so often drawn to lifestyles full of busy schedules active social lives frequent travels and elaborate goals and achievements we end up in lives focused on all of these things but very little on ourselves the busy life is promoted to us by culture in movies in shows the news best-selling books on social media and so on for much of the modern world the ideal of this life is transfused into the blood but is this way of life even good for you since oftentimes people who live very simple modest quiet lives are viewed as unexceptional unsuccessful losers and so on it can perhaps be hard to see a quiet simple life of relative obscurity as something appealing noteworthy intentional and difficult but in truth for at least some portion of us this sort of life is in fact a redeeming endeavor indicative of immense discipline and wisdom if a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer let him step to the music he hears however measured or far away wrote 19th century american transcendentalist writer and philosopher henry david thoreau thoreau was a figure who focused much of his life and philosophy on the value of simplicity self-reliance authenticity and separating from the influences and conventions of modern life he not only wrote about these concepts but he lived them after avoiding the expected standard career paths and befriending the founding father of the transcendentalist philosophy movement ralph waldo emerson for years thoreau lived by himself in a cabin in the woods on a plot of emerson's land here he led a simple quiet secluded life focusing only on what he believed he truly needed and valued he worked only one day a week reduced his material possessions to a minimum separated from the social and cultural world immersed into nature and focused on his passion of writing during this time he wrote his master work walden in one passage of this book he reflects on his time and reasons for living alone in the woods writing i went to the woods because i wish 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 discovered that i had not lived i wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life we all want to live a good life and be successful but how often do we stop and evaluate what a good successful life might be for us how often do we consider not how it would look from the outside but how it would feel from the inside the only place it is actually experienced plainly being successful merely means having adequately accomplished a predetermined goal or task and so arguably being successful in life depends solely on having mindfully determined an overarching goal for how you want to live and then living adequately that way thus those who live a quiet modest simple life are just as successful as someone who lives a busy and culturally significant one so long as in both cases both ways of life are intentionally pursued both are equally successful when obtained only in the case in which someone is living unintentionally and without deliberation is one unsuccessful thus even on the highest of thrones the remotest of destinations and the most private of rooms we might just as likely find examples of failure as we might in a small cabin in the woods of course some of us might find ourselves in conditions and circumstances we did not choose that cannot easily be broken free from conditions that come with financial mental or health constraints and responsibilities that require ways of life that we may not prefer and of course many of us do prefer busy frantic material lives but for the number of us for whom this is not the case if we choose to give up our time to people and things we don't value that take us from people and things we do where a different accessible orientation of our life would not require this then perhaps we have ventured the wrong direction and would benefit from some amount of simplification or at the very least a reasonable renovation of our lives inevitably we almost give up some portion of our time to people things and tasks that we do not want to but the essential question we must ask ourselves when we can is how much why and for what we all know that time is the only commodity that cannot be earned or bought back when it is gone and in a fundamental sense it is the only thing we truly have and yet we often exchange it haphazardly for reasons we don't think much about we would never let anyone take our money or our car or any of our stuff but yet we often freely let people and things and experiences take our time every day month year and decade and here is where we might call upon thoreau emerson and other great thinkers alike to realize the value of our deliberateness and focus on our time our perception and the internal experience of our lives and not on things other people's opinions and that which we cannot control outside of ourselves in short thoreau wrote i am convinced both by faith and experience that to maintain oneself on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime if we will live simply and wisely perhaps we don't always need to take that new job with those greater responsibilities accept that invitation to that concert or that party go to that place we've seen everyone go keep as many relationships with as many people as we can try to keep up with everyone we know and see online or buy that new version of that new thing perhaps rather for some of us we would be better served by focusing on how to draw down the items on the to-do list the events on the calendar the people we engage with and instead keep a relatively concise schedule with just a few important things and a few important people in truth an exciting life is a life in which we are excited to be alive not necessarily one in which we are always frantically doing things there is nothing impressive about living a life you do not like if you do not have to and there is great virtue and heroism and simply staying sane kind spending meaningful time with a few close loved ones and maintaining authenticity in one's work and life of course none of this is to make light of the difficulty of doing such a thing and living such a way swimming against the current of social conventions of personal and cultural expectations of what you're currently doing is like trying to get back to the shoreline while the force of the ocean's current pulls you further and further out to sea and moreover the ambiguity of what we actually want and what is actually good for us is always present the temptation of the alleviation of responsibility by just letting the current take us and living how others live defining success and excitement how others define it spurs in every post on social media and intimates in every encounter in which we are asked what do you do but in the words of thoreau rather than love then money then fame give me truth to find truths and values the row look to nature independence and a life of simplicity but arguably where we look is perhaps far less important than why we look where we do it is in thoreau's deliberateness that we should draw inspiration from not necessarily his lifestyle a successful life is not one filled with important meetings active social lives high wealth or fame but nor is it one reduced to its most basic form filled primarily with free time and leisure a successful life is simply a conscious one one made of authenticity self-reliance and continual adaptation toward who we are and how we want to live in the end the only shame of being unsuccessful in life is being unsuccessful in living how you want to the best you can this video was sponsored by fabulous an essential part of simplifying and leading an intentional life is defining the basic things that we find important and then constructing habits and routines around those things so they stick somewhat ironically though sometimes it's the simple most important things that can be the hardest to do this for eating and sleeping well exercising or meditating staying hydrated focused and calm all are about as basic and important as you can get but yet a great many of us struggle doing these things and understandably so the modern world often demands more of us than there is to give the self-care app fabulous is like a digital coach that helps make the process of developing and sticking to an intentional life easier and more rewarding by using science-backed principles and a range of functions and features fabulous helps you break down long-term goals into small tasks that build into consistent daily routines you can pick from more than a hundred habits or create 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Channel: Pursuit of Wonder

Views: 2,156,175

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Id: 9bHM-mhgQyk

Length: 10min 22sec (622 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 21 2022