Live the Life You've Imagined

Aim high! Live the life you’ve imagined! Simplify! These, of course, are the lessons Thoreau intended to impart in Walden. Do many people act on these maxims? Certainly, and many who do so have no idea that these are Henry’s directions and they may in fact have come to them from other equally positive sources, especially from within their own hearts and minds.

Not all who aim high, live fully realized and authentic lives, and simplify are seeking fame and fortune. Some very private beings have done it all in tiny hamlets in which they delivered all of the babies for two generations or married the town's youth and buried it's dead or served as selectmen or emergency medical technicians. Others own local businesses that enrich the town and employ their neighbors. These lives can be just as rich and fulfilling as those whose visions were as bright as comets streaking across the heavens.

Bill Clinton dreamed of becoming president. Warren Beatty was bound to make movies. Picasso seemed born to paint. And Mother Teresa was determined to ease the pain and suffering of the dying. Did they ever aim high and live the lives they imagined. Simplify? Except for Mother Teresa, perhaps this group might have been a little light on that count.

Henry’s notion that, “In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high,” says nothing about failing and quitting. Perhaps that first dream wasn’t quite right. Bill Frist set out to be a surgeon but today finds himself the U.S. Senate Majority leader, and it’s rumored that he aspires to the White House. And Mark Twain might have lived out his life as the steamboat captain Sam Clemens were it not for the choice to act on his dreams.

Some are late bloomers. Cesar Chavez was impelled by the animal like conditions in the fields to organize his union and seek justice for his lettuce picking followers.

Just because you aimed high and failed doesn’t mean that you can’t still dream or dream again or dream anew and follow it. America is the land of second – and third, fourth and fifth – chances.

Instead of resolving for 2005 to lose twenty pounds, to curse less often or to cure some other perceived personal flaw or fault, why not aim high and live the life you’ve imagined?

It’s never too late. You can do it! Happy New Year!

Mild Bill

BLOG ON!