Moments ago I was distracted by the projector showing a page from the Walden excerpt we just read. I happened to notice my teacher highlighting a sentence I had highlighted that morning, but even though I had made the highlight public, mine wasn’t showing up. I was annoyed that it looked like he’d “gotten to it” first.

Soon enough I will stop caring and it will be one of the most petty slights to have been wrought against me.

There, my friends, is the difference between “petty fears and petty pleasures” and “great and worthy things.” Pettiness does not last. You can close your eyes, sink into meaningless drivel, and wonder where the time went, but that’s not going to sustain you. That drivel is going to fade from your mind pretty quick, to be replaced by more of the same whenever you sink in.

Worthiness, though, has an aftertaste. It takes time to achieve something meaningful– more than a day, normally. That meaning, that goal and purpose behind your actions (and it’s purpose that defines worthiness), it’ll stick in the back of your mind. Not in the “hanging over your head” sense, but in the “I’ll have made things this much better by working at this” sense. It’s motivated, and it’ll drive you to improve yourself.

And years later, when you think back and reminisce, you’ll remember that you achieved something that was worthy of your time, something that made a difference, and you’ll have at least one thing to be proud of.

…But maybe you don’t need to be proud of yourself to be happy?

Perhaps sinking in gives you all the comfort you need. And as long as you’re happy, you’ll never perceive that you should do something else.

Is… is that sort of life… “wrong?” Is it unacceptable in general to take the easy road? Who says you have to go one way or the other? Maybe you can last for a while soaking in petty pursuits. Perhaps that’s the life.

…Wait. That’s not necessarily the point.

Life itself is a big collaboration. Humans are social animals: we created art, any number of asinine languages, and law systems. We are meant to work together… but that requires effort and drive.

Without meaning, a sense that our task is worthy of our time, what do we contribute to this great, societal group project? If we close our eyes to great actions, do we become that one group member who plays Candy Crush while everybody else loses sleep over the work that they’ll have to do later?

I think that was the point– we aren’t worthwhile beings to each other unless we can find a real purpose.

Doesn’t that conflict with Thoreau’s beliefs about simplicity and the self, though? Suppose he actually just thinks that people with great meaningful pursuits are just lazy wastes of space. Sounds a bit… Elitist, almost. Like everybody who hasn’t had the benefit of being awakened to great ideas has no hope of redemption. Doesn’t seem like the message that should be coming from a perennially famous plhiosopher.

What a tangled web he weaves. For all his talk of simplicity and reducing clutter, he sure doesn’t do the same when he writes.