“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, a make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped keep it open. The surface of the Earth is so soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take the cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now” (Thoreau 351).

This passage stood out to me as he is recommending we avoid the beaten track and avoid falling into the same old rut, but is admitting this too happens to him even during his time at Walden.

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise” (Thoreau 356).

This passage stood out to me as I found the words to be encouraging. So often I think we do take our lives for granted; we find faults where we could not if we would embrace our lives as they are by “meeting it” and “living it”.