Friday, August 29, 2025

Coming to Thoreau


​A question haunts me, as it always has,

A heavy inquiry, a relentless pass.

It seeks a reason for this bitter stay, 

A purpose for the grinding, mundane day.

​I once believed a holy purpose given,

A sacred contract made with distant heaven.

To serve a godhead, in solemn and cold grace,

And earn a place in some unearthly place.


​I later found a humanist's strict creed,

That we alone plant our own conscious seed.

We built our own meaning, with sterile, cold art,

A testament of reason, from mind and from heart.


​The hedonist's lesson, a fleeting, brief joy,

A sweet, shallow solace to fill and destroy.

"The purpose of being is to feel and to taste,"

A fragile, fast moment, so quickly erased.


​And then the void spoke, a truth bleak and grim,

A nihilist's insight, up to the brim.

"There's no purpose to find, no meaning, nor why,"

Just cosmic indifference beneath a cold sky.


​I once embraced a truth of radical choice,

The existentialist's firm, defiant voice.

"You must forge your own meaning, on paths you create,"

A solitary burden, a burden of fate.


​I remember the Stoic, so poised and so grand,

With a tranquil stillness I could not command.

"The meaning is virtue," their words would impart,

A cold, simple solace for a tempestuous heart.


​But the final wisdom, the one I now claim,

Came from a simple life, a burning, clear flame.

A quiet retreat from the world's grasping hand,

To truly confront and to finally understand.


​That a simple life is not just a choice,

It's the only real path for the soul to rejoice.

For in a simple state, unburdened and free,

We find a raw purpose, the truest of me.

Not given, not built, but brutally unveiled,

Where the noise of the world finally failed.

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