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While many people may think that living in a huge house and having expensive things may work for them, it didn’t work for a man named, Graham Hill. Graham decided to move into a 420-square-foot studio, he realized he liked minimalist living a lot better. He stated when he used to live in a bigger house that, “somehow his stuff ended up ruining my life, or a lot of it; the things I consumed ended up consuming me.” Graham acts a lot like Thoreau when it comes to living a minimalist lifestyle. They both didn’t enjoy having lots of stuff and living a luxurious lifestyle, they decided to live a more transcendentalist life with simple homes and lives.

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Opinion

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Credit Credit Maxwell Holyoke-Hirsch

I LIVE in a 420-square-foot studio. I sleep in a bed that folds down from the wall. I have six dress shirts. I have 10 shallow bowls that I use for salads and main dishes. When people come over for dinner, I pull out my extendable dining room table. I don't have a single CD or DVD and I have 10 percent of the books I once did.

I have come a long way from the life I had in the late '90s, when, flush with cash from an Internet start-up sale, I had a giant house crammed with stuff - electronics and cars and appliances and gadgets.

Somehow this stuff ended up running my life, or a lot of it; the things I consumed ended up consuming me. My circumstances are unusual (not everyone gets an Internet windfall before turning 30), but my relationship with material things isn't.

We live in a world of surfeit stuff, of big-box stores and 24-hour online shopping opportunities. Members of every socioeconomic bracket can and do deluge themselves with products.

There isn't any indication that any of these things makes anyone any happier; in fact it seems the reverse may be true.

For me, it took 15 years, a great love and a lot of travel to get rid of all the inessential things I had collected and live a bigger, better, richer life with less.

It started in 1998 in Seattle, when my partner and I sold our Internet consultancy company, Sitewerks, for more money than I thought I'd earn in a lifetime.

To celebrate, I bought a four-story, 3,600-square-foot, turn-of-the-century house in Seattle's happening Capitol Hill neighborhood and, in a frenzy of consumption, bought a brand-new sectional couch (my first ever), a pair of $300 sunglasses, a ton of gadgets, like an Audible.com MobilePlayer (one of the first portable digital music players) and an audiophile-worthy five-disc CD player. And, of course, a black turbocharged Volvo. With a remote starter!

I was working hard for Sitewerks' new parent company, Bowne, and didn't have the time to finish getting everything I needed for my house. So I hired a guy named Seven, who said he had been Courtney Love's assistant, to be my personal shopper. He went to furniture, appliance and electronics stores and took Polaroids of things he thought I might like to fill the house; I'd shuffle through the pictures and proceed on a virtual shopping spree.

My success and the things it bought quickly changed from novel to normal. Soon I was numb to it all. The new Nokia phone didn't excite me or satisfy me. It didn't take long before I started to wonder why my theoretically upgraded life didn't feel any better and why I felt more anxious than before.

My life was unnecessarily complicated. There were lawns to mow, gutters to clear, floors to vacuum, roommates to manage (it seemed nuts to have such a big, empty house), a car to insure, wash, refuel, repair and register and tech to set up and keep working. To top it all off, I had to keep Seven busy. And really, a personal shopper? Who had I become? My house and my things were my new employers for a job I had never applied for.

It got worse. Soon after we sold our company, I moved east to work in Bowne's office in New York, where I rented a 1,900-square-foot SoHo loft that befit my station as a tech entrepreneur. The new pad needed furniture, housewares, electronics, etc. - which took more time and energy to manage.

AND because the place was so big, I felt obliged to get roommates - who required more time, more energy, to manage. I still had the Seattle house, so I found myself worrying about two homes. When I decided to stay in New York, it cost a fortune and took months of cross-country trips - and big headaches - to close on the Seattle house and get rid of the all of the things inside.

I'm lucky, obviously; not everyone gets a windfall from a tech start-up sale. But I'm not the only one whose life is cluttered with excess belongings.

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Graham Hill cleaned the inessential items out of his life. Credit Tom Sewell for The New York Times

In a study published last year titled "Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century," researchers at U.C.L.A. observed 32 middle-class Los Angeles families and found that all of the mothers' stress hormones spiked during the time they spent dealing with their belongings. Seventy-five percent of the families involved in the study couldn't park their cars in their garages because they were too jammed with things.

Our fondness for stuff affects almost every aspect of our lives. Housing size, for example, has ballooned in the last 60 years. The average size of a new American home in 1950 was 983 square feet; by 2011, the average new home was 2,480 square feet. And those figures don't provide a full picture. In 1950, an average of 3.37 people lived in each American home; in 2011, that number had shrunk to 2.6 people. This means that we take up more than three times the amount of space per capita than we did 60 years ago.

Apparently our supersize homes don't provide space enough for all our possessions, as is evidenced by our country's $22 billion personal storage industry.

What exactly are we storing away in the boxes we cart from place to place? Much of what Americans consume doesn't even find its way into boxes or storage spaces, but winds up in the garbage.

The Natural Resources Defense Council reports, for example, that 40 percent of the food Americans buy finds its way into the trash.

Enormous consumption has global, environmental and social consequences. For at least 335 consecutive months, the average temperature of the globe has exceeded the average for the 20th century. As a recent report for Congress explained, this temperature increase, as well as acidifying oceans, melting glaciers and Arctic Sea ice are "primarily driven by human activity." Many experts believe consumerism and all that it entails - from the extraction of resources to manufacturing to waste disposal - plays a big part in pushing our planet to the brink. And as we saw with Foxconn and the recent Beijing smog scare, many of the affordable products we buy depend on cheap, often exploitive overseas labor and lax environmental regulations.

Does all this endless consumption result in measurably increased happiness?

In a recent study, the Northwestern University psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen linked consumption with aberrant, antisocial behavior. Professor Bodenhausen found that "Irrespective of personality, in situations that activate a consumer mind-set, people show the same sorts of problematic patterns in well-being, including negative affect and social disengagement." Though American consumer activity has increased substantially since the 1950s, happiness levels have flat-lined.

I DON'T know that the gadgets I was collecting in my loft were part of an aberrant or antisocial behavior plan during the first months I lived in SoHo. But I was just going along, starting some start-ups that never quite started up when I met Olga, an Andorran beauty, and fell hard. My relationship with stuff quickly came apart.

I followed her to Barcelona when her visa expired and we lived in a tiny flat, totally content and in love before we realized that nothing was holding us in Spain. We packed a few clothes, some toiletries and a couple of laptops and hit the road. We lived in Bangkok, Buenos Aires and Toronto with many stops in between.

A compulsive entrepreneur, I worked all the time and started new companies from an office that fit in my solar backpack. I created some do-gooder companies like We Are Happy to Serve You, which makes a reusable, ceramic version of the iconic New York City Anthora coffee cup and TreeHugger.com, an environmental design blog that I later sold to Discovery Communications. My life was full of love and adventure and work I cared about. I felt free and I didn't miss the car and gadgets and house; instead I felt as if I had quit a dead-end job.

The relationship with Olga eventually ended, but my life never looked the same. I live smaller and travel lighter. I have more time and money. Aside from my travel habit - which I try to keep in check by minimizing trips, combining trips and purchasing carbon offsets - I feel better that my carbon footprint is significantly smaller than in my previous supersized life.

Intuitively, we know that the best stuff in life isn't stuff at all, and that relationships, experiences and meaningful work are the staples of a happy life.

I like material things as much as anyone. I studied product design in school. I'm into gadgets, clothing and all kinds of things. But my experiences show that after a certain point, material objects have a tendency to crowd out the emotional needs they are meant to support.

I wouldn't trade a second spent wandering the streets of Bangkok with Olga for anything I've owned. Often, material objects take up mental as well as physical space.

I'm still a serial entrepreneur, and my latest venture is to design thoughtfully constructed small homes that support our lives, not the other way around. Like the 420-square-foot space I live in, the houses I design contain less stuff and make it easier for owners to live within their means and to limit their environmental footprint. My apartment sleeps four people comfortably; I frequently have dinner parties for 12. My space is well-built, affordable and as functional as living spaces twice the size. As the guy who started TreeHugger.com, I sleep better knowing I'm not using more resources than I need. I have less - and enjoy more.

My space is small. My life is big.

Graham Hill is the founder of LifeEdited.com and TreeHugger.com.

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Opinion I LIVE in a 420-square-foot studio. I sleep in a bed that folds down from the wall. I have six dress shirts. I have 10 shallow bowls that I use for salads and main dishes. When people come over for dinner, I pull out my extendable dining room table.

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Anyone can make a difference in the world, but it’s the people who actually speak up and fix the problems who do. Katie Fahey was a woman in her 20’s who didn’t believe in something so she spoke up. Katie Fahey said, “There were great moments in American history when people rose up to correct it when something wasn’t right. I said, technically, I’m allowed to try. So I'm going to.” Sophie Fahey a leader and founder of Voters not Politicians wanted to end gerrymandering. While, she had drawbacks Sophie fought and spoke up and is still continuing to make a difference. Thoreau and Sophie Fahey are a lot alike because they both didn’t settle, and they stood up for what they thought was right.

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Fixes

Even during a year of division and fear of the future in many corners of America, the Fixes column found people trying to make things better - and succeeding.

By Tina Rosenberg

Ms. Rosenberg is a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Networ k, which supports rigorous reporting about responses to social problems.

What difference can one ordinary person make?

Here are six people Fixes wrote about in the last year who show what the answer can be: a lot.

Last month, Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure that changed the state Constitution. It created a commission of independent citizens to draw the lines of congressional districts, taking the job away from politicians.

This result is remarkable. Even more remarkable is how it happened. The founder and leader of Voters Not Politicians is Katie Fahey, a Michigan woman in her 20s with no political experience. She wrote on Facebook that she wanted to end gerrymandering. Thousands of volunteers responded. They collected hundreds of thousands of signatures to put the measure onto the ballot, and then went door to door to ask people to vote for it. When the campaign needed money, volunteers asked their family and friends to chip in.

Ms. Fahey kept waiting for someone who knew what they were doing to come along and tell her to run along now, but no one did.

In the last few months, Voters Not Politicians became more professional. By then, its citizen army had made its message of citizen power even more persuasive.

But being amateurs also had drawbacks. "The system wasn't built for civilians," Ms. Fahey said. Most campaigns, for example, have experts file the required reports to the state. Voters Not Politicians had to learn to do it itself.

Voters Not Politicians now gets calls from people all over who want to fight gerrymandering or want to organize around other issues. "Who's helping the regular person who wants a dog park in their community?" Ms. Fahey asked. "We challenged the assumption you have to wait for someone else, or look to a politician to fix a problem. Some 27-year-old can get a lot of people excited about gerrymandering and amend the constitution."

Amazon's move to Queens will make New York's shortage of software developers far worse. At the same time, lots of low-income New Yorkers would love those jobs - but don't have the skills.

Is there a way to solve both problems at once?

Jukay Hsu has some suggestions. He's the founder of Pursuit (which used to be called C4Q, and before that, Coalition for Queens). It trains talented young people in dead-end jobs to become software developers.

Pursuit starts with a 10-month intensive boot camp where students learn coding, professional skills and how to navigate the tech industry. Then, for the next three years, they get coaching and support while working.

That's expensive, but, Mr. Hsu says, good job training is. "Most job training doesn't really have results," he said. "It's really hard to do this well."

There are lots of coding boot camps. Pursuit is different because it aims at students who can't pay. Such projects often get their money from charity or grants, but that would have kept Pursuit too small.

Since the program started five years ago, about 550 students have graduated from or are studying in Pursuit's boot camp - largely female, without college degrees, immigrant, black or Hispanic.

Mr. Hsu has come up with new ways to pay for the work. Pursuit's students do pay tuition - but only after they graduate and get a job paying at least $60,000. Then they pay 12 percent of their salary for three years.

Pursuit raises the upfront money in two ways. One is to issue a bond, as public infrastructure projects do. Pursuit found investors to put up $750,000 for the first bond. If enough students graduate, get high-paying jobs and pay tuition, the investors will profit. Mr. Hsu is now seeking multiple millions for the organization's next bond.

The other way is to charge companies. Companies already pay recruiters to find software developers. Now, instead, they can pay Pursuit to retrain their own blue-collar workers.

So far, only two companies, Blue Apron and Managed by Q, are doing this. But another company is about to start: Pursuit will run a training center inside Amazon.

One of the sad mysteries of American life is our infant mortality rate, which ranks 130th in the world out of 184 countries, just ahead of East Timor.

And complications for the mother and baby are concentrated among African-American mothers. In a study of New York City hospital births, African-American mothers with a college education had more pregnancy complications than white mothers who didn't finish high school.

Increasingly, researchers believe it's because of the effect on the body of the stress and feeling of powerlessness caused by racism.

Jennie Joseph may have an answer. She is a midwife, trained in her hometown, London, who practices in a suburb of Orlando, Fla. Her patients are largely Haitian, African-American or Latina. She takes any patient, regardless of ability to pay or how advanced the pregnancy. And yet their rate of prematurity is half the local and national average. (Studies are her e and here.)

Ms. Joseph believes that treating patients with dignity protects them from stress.

She designed her clinic to help patients feel respected, valued and in control of their pregnancies, starting with a welcoming, no-drama front desk that doesn't ask about ability to pay. "Our receptionist is probably the most important person on the team," said Ms. Joseph. "Greet, be nice, wipe the tears."

Ms. Joseph teaches her method, which she calls the JJ Way. But it's hard to spread her ideas in a system in which the economic incentives lead to worse care: For example, a premature baby ( average cost: $50,000) is very profitable for most hospitals.

Ms. Joseph can barely keep her own doors open. "We bill, and when people can pay, they do, and when they can't, we don't charge. There's not a business model here."

Deschutes County, Ore., is a declared wildfire hazard area. But in the last 15 years, only three houses have burned down. Allison Green has had a lot to do with that success. She's coordinator for Deschutes County of Project Wildfire, teaching residents how to keep their homes safe from fire.

That means showing them how to clear anything flammable within 30 to 50 feet of a house. "Fire moves through a landscape throwing embers two to three miles ahead," said Ms. Green. "If they find flammable materials, they smolder and ignite."

"The science behind defensible space has been around since the late 1990s," she said. "I translate that science to residents. These are really simple changes, but not something a lot of folks think about."

Her biggest challenge: Twenty people move to Deschutes County every day. They all need to learn how to protect their homes - and put in the work to do so.

In August, three houses burned - the first home casualties since 2003. It was a high-wind day, and there had been no rain for more than two months. "These folks hadn't found the time to put in defensible space correctly," Ms. Green said. "It was devastating, but the way that fire was burning, it could have been 3,000 home losses."

Getting the police to prosecute rape is a problem everywhere, but few police departments were quite as bad as Philadelphia's before 2000. The department declared hundreds of rape cases each year to be "unfounded"- without investigation.

Carol Tracy is the director of the city's Women's Law Project. In 1999, she pushed a new police commissioner, John Timoney, to let advocates for rape survivors read through the case files. Police and advocates often saw one another as adversaries, if not enemies. But a series of meetings with Ms. Tracy convinced Mr. Timoney. "We didn't want to punish people and do a 'gotcha,'" she said.

The next year, Ms. Tracy and five or so colleagues went to the sex crimes unit's headquarters and spent three days reading through the files, flagging questionable practices. That review still happens every spring.

Over time, police practices have greatly improved, Ms. Tracy said. And now the advocate reviews are starting to spread - for example, to the New York Police Department.

While reading the files, Ms. Tracy noticed that the F.B.I. defined rape as "carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will." If that sounds archaic, it's because it was written in 1929. "That came as news to all of us," she said.

Ms. Tracy and the Women's Law Project wrote to Robert Mueller, who was then the F.B.I.'s director, asking the bureau to amend the definition. That started a national movement to expand the definition of rape as a crime to be taken seriously - which didn't happen until 2012. "It comes back in so many ways for me how marginal sexual assault has been to public policy," Ms. Tracy said.

Few women around the world can get a mammogram. They are far from a clinic, or lack the money, or just don't know about breast cancer. But now there's another kind of breast exam that could reach women that mammograms don't.

The iBreastExam machine fits in your hand, runs on batteries, costs as little as a dollar per scan, is painless, uses no radiation and is simple enough that community health workers can do breast exams.

Mihir Shah, who is from Mumbai, India, studied computer engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia. With colleagues, he formed a company in January 2009 to make a machine that could democratize the breast exam. The first attempt was too big and too expensive. Then they used a Drexel-developed sensor to create iBreastExam.

That was, however, far less than half the battle - and it's the second part that trips up most entrepreneurs, especially those making products for poor countries. "There are so many great technologies out there," said Matthew Campisi, a co-founder. "That doesn't make them a successful product."

In 2016 they began testing iBreastExam in India with some health organizations, and at a private hospital in Bengaluru. Those tests allowed them to collect data on the machine's accuracy and sensitivity (see here and here) and learn useful lessons about how to proceed.

So far, iBreastExam has been cleared by regulatory bodies in 10 countries. One is the United States. Mr. Shah said that 70 percent of uninsured women don't get routine mammograms. "We're not saying it's a replacement for a mammogram," he said. "We're saying there are areas where it can help."

Tina Rosenberg won a Pulitzer Prize for her book " The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism." She is a former editorial writer for The Times and the author, most recently, of " Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World" and the World War II spy story e-book "D for Deception."
To receive email alerts for Fixes columns, sign up

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misidentified on second reference the organization that asked Robert Mueller, director of the F.B.I. at the time, to amend the definition of rape. It was the Women's Law Project, not Women's Law Center. The article also misidentified the place where members of the project reviewed Police Department files. It was the headquarters of the department's sex crimes unit, not the Police Department's headquarters.

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Fixes Even during a year of division and fear of the future in many corners of America, the Fixes column found people trying to make things better - and succeeding. By Tina Rosenberg Ms. Rosenberg is a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Networ k, which supports rigorous reporting about responses to social problems. What difference can one ordinary person make?

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The podcast stated, “Choice not change determines your destiny.”  Everything in your life is up to you, it’s your decision. You have to know yourself to be able to see the light. The podcast wants you to follow what is right and not what the society wants you to do. This podcast is very informational on what kind of life you should live, if you want to be your own person successfully.

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inspirational living: life lessons for success & happiness

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"The Best Wisdom of Aristotle | Philosophers & Philosophy" from Inspirational Living: Life Lessons for Success & Happiness by The Living Hour on Apple Podcasts

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Listen to episode 340 of the Inspirational Living Podcast: The Best of Aristotle | Philosophers & Philosophy. Edited and adapted from the works of Aristotle. Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast. If you enjoy our po

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What is Transcendentalism? The book definition for this is, “The belief that the most important reality is what is sensed or what is intuitive, rather than what is thought such as scientific knowledge.” In my opinion, this definition makes no since to me. My definition for Transcendentalism is self-reliance, living a simple life, and letting your voice be heard.  I made a wordle of all the words that I think transcendentalism means.

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This a place where I am happiest and where I can think my own thoughts. My home is somewhere that I love, and I can always be my true self. My home is a place I feel peace, it’s where all conflicts and hard times are lifted, and I can relax, I can be alone. Like Thoreau, I feel he relates to me a lot with wanting to be alone and to be be able to think by myself.

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This image reminded me a lot of what I would think Thoreau’s home would look like. This painting shows that you don’t need to live in a big house or have lots of money to live the way you want to live. Thoreau wanted to live a minimalist lifestyle and just stay low key.

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This painting really stuck out to me when I was searching, it immediately reminded me of Emerson. “Emerson believed in reimagining the divine as something large and visible, which he referred to as nature.” Nature is something that many transcendentalists see as a way to escape your real life. With analyzing this picture, I realized that this boy uses nature as a way to escape. He uses it in a way to feel free.

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I picked the following image because life can be lived two ways, bad or good. It’s the intake that you take on life in which path you might pick. All this tree image is showing is that it’s your choice, it’s your life, no one else is picking for you. Throughout, Thoreau’s life, he had ups and downs but he never looked back, Thoreau chose his life and what he wanted to do with it, good or bad.

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I Don’t want To Be by Gavin DeGraw- Song 3

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I Don’t want To Be by Gavin DeGraw- Song 3

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A big part in my life is being myself, and not changing for anyone. I guess you could call me part Transcendentalist because I want to be my own person. I want to stand up for what I believe in and fight for the things I want to change. Gavin DeGraw sang, “I don’t want to be anything other than me.” This lyric really stuck with me and showed me not to live my life through anyone else except for myself. Transcendentalism is shown very vividly in this song by showing to just be yourself and everything will be ok.

Song:
All I have to do is think of me and I have a piece of mind
I’m tired of looking around rooms wondering what I gotta do
Or who I’m supposed to be
I don’t want to be anyone other than me

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The lyrics in the song, Fight Song have showed that even when times get hard, you can keep going. Rachel Platten sang, “And I don’t really care if nobody else believes.” When she sang this it really showed her transcendentalist side, she recognizes how she will not stop fighting even when times get hard, even if people don’t believe her. She has put out a message everywhere to people of all ages to not stop fighting. Rachel Platten and any Transcendentalist will fight for what they believe in because there life path comes first, you come first.

Song:
My power’s turned on
Starting right now i’ll be strong
I’ll play my fight song
And I don’t really care if nobody believes in
‘Cause i’ve still got a little fight left in me

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Serena Williams is my hero❗️Serena is an independent, strong woman who shows Transcendentalism by leading her own path, doing what she feels is right. Serena Williams said in the video, “If I waited for change to happen, I would have never made a difference.” She wanted people to    stand up for what they believe in and go down their own path. Serena Williams reminds me of Thoreau in ways of them both fighting for what they believed in.

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Serena Williams on Instagram: "Don’t wait to be told your place. Take it. Don’t wait for people to find you. Find them — in work, love, and life — on @bumble. #InHerCourt"

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193K likes, 3,875 comments - serenawilliams on February 3, 2019: "Don’t wait to be told your place. Take it. Don’t wait for people to find you. Find them — in work, love, and life — on @bumble. #InHerCourt". 

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View this post on Instagram

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Poem-Song of Myself (1892 version)- Poem 1

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Poem-Song of Myself (1892 version)- Poem 1

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Just from hearing the tile of the poem, it shows Walt Whitman was an individual who cherished himself. He liked who he was and what he represented. In the first line of the poem, Walt says, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.” Loving yourself is key to having a happy life. While I know feeling acceptation is hard, once u accept yourself then no one else matters. Every single person should be able to celebrate themselves for who they are, and that’s what Whitman did.

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Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

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This is one of my all-time favorite songs, the whole message it puts out is to never give up on yourself. In life if you really believe in something, you can achieve it, and that’s exactly what Journey was
trying to incorporate into his lyrics. Believing in myself is defiantly one thing that I do, if I didn’t believe in myself I have no idea where I would even be today. Believing in one's self makes u be able to make friends, start conversations, and stand up to people who don’t believe in you. Journey sings the lyric, “just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroithe, took the midnight train going anywhere...” The boy, Journey talks about in the song is just a city boy who believed in himself and was able to follow his dreams. This boy never gave up on himself because he believes in himself, like every person should, just like Thoreau did. Even with all of Thoreau’s obstacles he always believed in himself to be the man he was born to be. This song defiantly depicts everything Thoreau stood for, by showing the true meaning in life, to believe in one self.

Song:
In just a small town girl,
Livin’ in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin’ anywhere...
Just a city boy,
Born and raised in south detroithe
Took the midnight train goin’ anywhere...

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In life, not every person sees the same thing, or sees it in the same way. I am a person who always take a different look on things then everyone else, but this makes me who I am. The selection of things we see is so important to grasp because looking at something in a certain way can be crucial to the importance of the rest of your life. The following quote shows that you have the ability to see things, it’s your lens that chooses to see the world around you. Life is something that you have the ability to watch every day, what you see is never “right” or “wrong” but the beauty you see inside it, is the importance.

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With the following quote, Thoreau is expressing that even with all the mishap trials in life you need to keep going. Misfortunes in life help you move farther and help you learn from your mistakes. Misfortunes help you learn from your mistakes, so you can become a better person, the person you want to be. A Transcendentalist won’t look back on the unimportant misfortunes throughout life, they would keep going.

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I can really relate to Thoreau in this because life should be lived to the fullest.  You only have one life to do what you want with it, at least make it fun. You should look at life as if you never know it’s going to end. Thoreau wants his readers to know that following your dreams makes you the happiest. People get caught up in the moment so much they don’t even focus ontheir main goal in life. Henry wants every person to live their life the way they want to and not for anyone else. In Thoreau’s mind, self-made things come first.

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While, money plays a big factor in my life I guess it’s not everything and Thoreau tried to teach us that. The following quote depicts the transcendental idea that money isn’t everything. Thoreau is trying to say that instead of always thinking money is the key to happiness, maybe you should think about yourself first, make some goals. Being poor or rich won’t make you any happier but knowing yourself and being the real you will. While I wish money could make you happy, it doesn’t, to be truly happy you have to love yourself first.