Although pleasing your family and society’s expectations of you has some value, true life is lived when you live purely for yourself and your own personal gain. Hence, I completely agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau’s views on self-reliance and transcendentalism. Not only are these well-versed ideas, but it is also purely economic. The number one rule after getting a paycheck is to pay yourself. So why shouldn’t someone live their entire life this way? In addition, we grow up believing that industrializing society is the only path towards progress. That going back to nature and living purely o bare necessities is a letdown and a waste of time. But what really is time? Time is purely a theoretical value and frame that we have given ourselves.

I agree most strongly with Emerson’s belief of living solely for your own benefit. In Self-Reliance, Emerson states, “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.” I believe that if there was one correct way to live life, this is it. Although we are brought up to have good morals in terms of being selfless and helping others whenever possible, it is purely impossible and unproductive to help another if you cannot help your own self. I most definitely could follow Emerson and Thoreau in giving up the life I currently live and changing direction radically because I do not believe the life I was born into is the life I want to continue living. Parents will do all they can to instill their own values and beliefs into their children because they want their children to theoretically live a more progressive life than they did. I believe, however, a majority of these instilled ideas, no matter how morally good and wonderful they may seem to the common man, are, in fact, superficial and unnecessary. I was personally brought up to have my only goal be to do well in school and get a good job. But, to be able to go out into the world with no other goal but to live and to honestly and truly absorb every sight and sound around me every time I step outside would be so outrageous that it would be perfect.

And this, I believe.