In the first chapter Thoreau gives a sort of outline of his experiment at Waldon Pond. This first chapter really opened up my eyes and made me realize how heavily we depend on the things we use everyday. Thoreau’s experiment seems weird to us but it may not have been that out of the ordinary back then. If the average author today was to do a similar experiment I am not sure they would survive without some sort of training. By taking himself out everyday life and removing all the distractions around him Thoreau was able to take a closer look at life. Thoreau says the only things we need to life are food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. One could argue that the latter two are not necessary to live but rather necessary to live comfortably. I believe what Thoreau is trying to make people realize is that we believe we need things in our lives that really are not necessary.
Thinking about what people had then and what people have now I feel like people focus way to much on the things that are not essential. Because of how much technology has progressed in the past couple hundred years we are able to have all kinds of things people in the 19th century would have never dreamed of. The problem with having so many nice things is we take a lot of it for granted. We spend most of our lives doing things that are not essential for life and fail to be thankful for the things that we actually need. I believe we could all learn a lot by giving up the non essential things for a day or two and concentrating on the things we actually need like Thoreau did at Walden Pond. I do not think we all need to march off in to the woods and try living off the land and building our own cabins because we probably would not all make it, but to give up electronics would not kill us.