Live for the Promises of Today, not the Possibilities of Tomorrow
In the minds of the great transcendentalists, you only get to live once. Which poses one of their most influential ideas- Why not live that one life to its fullest? Why not experience the fascinations that the entire world has to offer, instead of confining yourself to a specific area? Why succumb to the normalities of society when you could transcend into a greater place? The transcendentalists believed that everyone should experience life to its capacity. Each individual should embrace life as if it is here for today, but could be gone tomorrow. One of the most famous Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson, stresed his belief in this idea in his essay "Self Reliance". He said to "Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again." Emerson, like many other people of his time, believed in living for what presents itself to us today, today, and worry about living what presents itself tomorrow, tomorrow. Nothing is promised beyond what we are living right now. Henry David Thoreau, another famous Transcendentalist, followed those same ideas in his explanations of life in Walden's Conclusion. During his essay he expresses his concerns by saying "I learned this at leas, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the directino of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imganied, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." Still, a big part of the ideas of Transcnedentalism was to live life to its fullest, and enjoy every part of it.
