Concluding Week Long Experiment…

“Living Deliberately?” At the beginning of the semester, I had no clue what that meant, to live deliberately. We read many books throughout the semester, and many articles that experimented and challenged ways of living. It was a great way to break into the topic of living deliberately, but I still didn’t understand what living deliberately was about or what that meant. Having us come up with a weeklong experimented that would challenge our lifestyles was a great way for us to actually experience what living deliberately was about, or at least get a little taste for it. I believe that doing this experiment allowed us to have full hands on experience and allowed us to be able to relate to authors such as Thoreau or Walden. I believe that doing this experiment has taught me more about what living deliberately means then all the other readings and discussions.

My experiment wasn’t as successful as I wanted it to be, yet I still liked my end result of it. I may not have succeeded in many areas of this experiment such as Technological, Transportation phases of this experiment, I still learned a lot. Maybe that was the point of this whole thing, the point of the experiment wasn’t only trying to succeed, but also evaluate our actions, and learn from our mistakes. I believe that this experiment was a success because what I took away from my mistakes was much more meaningful then my succession in the experiment. I learned that sometime I give up to easily, and that I try to blame my mistakes on other things instead of taking responsibility for it. When I made the challenge to stay away from Facebook and TV, I gave in to both of the categories within the first day. I learned that instead of trying to be a mature young adult, I acted like a young foolish kid who was trying to ignore the rules and tried to get away with activities I wasn’t supposed to do. I did not take the experiment seriously enough, and it isn’t life or death experiment, but I learned that no matter how decimal or unimportant something may be, I should still try to do my best, because that’s where it all starts, with small things and then further progress into much bigger things. That is where living deliberately comes in, if you can’t even take seriously simple little things, how can a person live deliberately? Living Deliberately includes taking information around us, and changing based on what we know. Walden did not become “No Impact Man” on the first day of his life experimented. He failed, he accepted the fact and improvised and had much better results after that. That is what Living Deliberately is about, taking in information such as facts or even one’s own mistakes, making decision that has a person truly question and reason of why they should do something and why they should live a certain way.

Living Deliberately is not an easy thing to do, there are many trials and errors, and great responsibility come when one chooses to live a different lifestyle. I know that I am not that person; I know that I can never change my lifestyle completely just because I found out what happens to animals, or the fact that this planet cannot sustain the amount of pollution that we produce. Although I may not be able to change my lifestyle, I can make choices that could have an impact, it may not be great, but at least I will know that I am trying to make a change. That is what Walden was trying say, that one does not have to change their lifestyle, but making even most decimal decision can go a long way. I will try to change some of the ways I do things, not only because it benefits others, but because I can also have benefits from the same changes. I had a fun time doing this experiment, and also want to thank professor J for make this part of our class, making the class much more meaningful then if we were to never do this experiment. This is my last post, hopefully you learned something from me, and maybe thinking about changing some of the current habits you may have. Have a good one! J