The quote above is from Henry David Thoreau’s seminal book “Walden.” Thoreau set out to live in the wilderness because he wanted to experience life in full. He wanted to eliminate all mundane and trivial activities that living in society brings about. He simply wanted to experience survival in the strictest sense of the word. No obligations other than keeping warm and fed. In this way, he could figure out if life in the modern world was worth it. What to leave in and what to take out. I’ve never gone alone into the woods, but I have examined my life and tried to adopt a similar mindset: keep what I love, eliminate the needless, and accept the bad necessities (apparently you have to pay rent at my apartment complex).
So this blog is about living the good life. Living deliberately. Living an examined life. While it sounds cliche, life should never pass you by. It should be purposeful. When you look back at your life when you die you don’t want to regret from having not lived how you wanted. As Teddy Roosevelt (26th President and Man in Full) said about death:
Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not ,then it means that life itself has become one.
So with that in mind I am in a continual journey on self-examination and self-development.
That’s All Well and Good, But Who Are You?
My name is Mark Trenkle and am a twenty something living in the means streets of Hollywood, CA. I read and I write and I learn. The purpose of this site is basically to learn how to live better. A journey of self-development. I wanted to read interesting books and post my thoughts and notes for anyone to see and I wanted to seek out the advice of people who I can learn from– which is pretty much everybody.
I feel like the key to living the good life is a relentless pursuit of knowledge– both read and hard won. As Dylan famously sang “he that’s not busy bein’ born is busy dying.” So that’s what I’m trying to do. Get born.