It occurred to me one day as I sat watching a rainstorm how my life had changed in my time at Walden. Distancing myself from all distractions, I forsook society and sought solitude. I came to befriend beauty as I learned to embrace nature for what it was rather than what I could make of it. But is not life itself one continual process of change? Even the bean field is planted; roots grow and stretch into the ground to catch and absorb the rain; leaves sprout and bask in the sun and are finally plucked to be used as food for myself and for others. Men, like the bean field, change over time. They are born; they grow; and inevitably, they must die. Men, like the bean field, must return to dust again. What is a man but made of dust anyway?

Men have deceived themselves into believing that they are more than the birds and apart from the trees, though they are, too, but a breath away from being cut down. Do not men, like the birds, have a beginning and an end? We share similar needs for both nourishment and protection, and we, like them, must change and adapt ourselves to our environment. Show me a man who has never undergone a change and I will show you a man who has never lived.
Men, in this modern age, attempt to change the world to suit their own fancies. They pave roads; they build houses; they cut down forests; and they establish social hierarchies, all in the pursuit of making the world a “better” place. They forget necessities
and pursue wants, unfortunately, trading in reality for a dream world. It is sad that men have wasted their entire lives attempting to adapt their environment to themselves rather than embracing the wonder that is nature and allowing themselves to be changed.
Men are intent on complicating the simplicities of life. They try to manipulate and control change in order to further their own shallow agendas. What more does a man need than the air in his lungs, the clothes on his back, and the soil beneath his feet? Life is simple once one realizes it passes too quickly to attempt to control it and, instead, learns to enjoy it. The mass of men live lives of quite desperation, they attempt to become the masters of change and, unknowingly, wind up as slaves to it.
I suppose all men mature with the mindset that the world revolves around their lives as individuals, but how little of living do they know? After all, what is living anyway? Perhaps the lives of men are only brief glimpses of what living is truly about. For once a generation is born, it thrives for only a little while before it is cleared away to make room for the next. If nothing else in the world is inevitable, change always will be. It should not be looked upon with fear, but rather, embraced as a way of life. In time, we all, the bean field, myself, and my readers, will return to dust again.