Most people, regardless of status or family background, would generally appreciate a less detailed, complicated life. Normally, the youth are attracted to a more complex, active existence. However, as one grows older, the simple life becomes more appealing; a person is inclined to settle down and concentrate on enjoying the remainder of their life, which is most often viewed as uncomplicated and undemanding. If one lives the last years of his/her life, the more poignant of years, in a way where instinct and necessity govern all parts of awareness, why not live an entire lifetime in that manner? In the essays "Why I Went to the Woods,"" by Henry David Thoreau, and "Living Like Weasels,"" by Annie Dillard, life is depicted as being more pleasant and beneficial when lived in the simplest form.
According to Thoreau, life for most has been tainted with unnecessary items and methods of transportation and communication: i.e., excessive furniture, post offices, and railroads. Thoreau believes that "when we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality- (350). In order to truly experience living one must not go through life hastily; therefore, the existence of all things is to be absorbed, assimilated into daily life. Hurrying through life and refusing to be cognizant of surroundings and situations results in an empty and unfulfilled life, fore one has to drift away from the "extravagant- life and delve into the activities he/she sincerely wishes to participate. To access this approach, to live with purpose, one has "to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms- (347); returning to .
the original way of life revitalizes an appreciation for existing, consequently revealing one's genuine needs and desires. .
Similarly, Dillard considers a simplistic life deeply satisfying and rewarding; she knows that "[she] would like to live as [she] should, as the weasel lives as he should- (121).