Photo Credit: Gillian Christie 2023
My annual sojourn last week to Walden Pond refreshed my soul, inspired my scripting new poetry, reset priorities, and reconnected me with those who appreciated the simple beauty that abounds in the forest and in the human connection.
Let’s take a moment to ponder the wisdom Thoreau shared at Walden ‘to live deliberately’ and ‘to front the essential facts of life’? What then are the essential facts of life? For a family, it can be ensuring good health, a safe and loving home, an education that provides usable skills, a place to play and share growth. For a business, it can be equitable exchange for one’s products and services, a loyal team, a trusted supply chain, the freedom to innovate and the acknowledgement of a job well done. For a community it can be the alignment of purposes that support the wellbeing of all, that allows for free thought and faith, that balances the needs of all life, human, animal, and botanical.
It is the concept of ‘deliberately’ that Thoreau punctuated this path of living. Deliberately, by definition is: carefully thought out, made or done on purpose, to consider. Are we not all living the life we have deliberately created, accomplishing the goals we designed, integrating those essential facts of life with vigor and curiosity? It would be too bold to say this was true for all without this one key element that helps one to accomplish this deliberate livingness.
To Thoreau, it was the aloneness of the woods, the stillness of the lake, the rocks, trees, birds, and air, all compatible, patient, resilient, harmonious and yet each unique, that instilled his deliberate livingness.
These were his inspiration.
It is truly inspiration that moves us to live deliberately, fully and reach our own goals. This inspiration may be an elder whose experiential wisdom shared generously ignites one’s motivation to succeed. This inspiration may be a friend’s kind words, or a coach’s direction, or a mother’s gentle teaching. This inspiration may be a mentor’s ideas that unravel a conundrum.
It is vital then, to find your inspiration and allow it to ensure you do live deliberately and fully.
And remember, you too may be another’s inspiration. Cherish the honor. Imagine then a world where all can live their dream, deliberately.
Gillian