Wanderlust: Get out there and live

Inspired by Stefan Sagmeister’s TED talk, Wanderlust, is four minutes of beauty captured by a couple as they traveled through South America, Europe, and New Zealand. I must admit I’m entirely jealous of their experience yet grateful they shared it with the world in such a beautifully edited way. I know I’ve been severely slacking on the posts here lately and I wish I could say its because I’ve been off exploring the world. While I have done a little traveling, much of my time has been spent in front of a computer screen either working or living vicariously through others. However, I think the latter needs to change.

I’ve recently begun reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature on a complete whim and to my delight, it’s absolutely amazing. I find myself in awe of nearly every passage and have to constantly set it aside to process his well composed thoughts. The quotation below is from the introduction and I happened to read it around the same day as viewing Wanderlust. Both seem to be poignant reminders that I/we shouldn’t allow life to simply pass by. There are too many beautiful things to experience.

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

-Introduction to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature

While I realize that reading Emerson now is contradictory to his own ideas, I still find it inspiring. So I think I’ll consider it supplemental to my own life and not seeing it through his eyes. That’s my rationale, but you’re of course entitled to your own.

The sun shines to-day also, so get out there and live.

2 Comments

1. I’ve been reading emerson on a whim as well. Hurray global consciousness!

   Comment courtesy of ramez — October 27, 2010 #

2. bizarre..

   Comment courtesy of Nathaniel — October 27, 2010 #

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