The first day my family moved into our new house a pint-sized, blonde girl that was no more than a year older than I greeted me. Confined in a room filled with boxes, I offered a nonchalant hello before returning to unpacking. With every question she asked me about where I lived before or random questions about myself, I provided more pathetic answers, which eventually prompted her to go home. Though she must’ve said it, I didn’t even care to catch her name until the week after when she invited me to hula-hoop with her. When you’re young, someone becomes your best friend within a matter of minutes. Yet it took no more than thirty seconds for Maddie and I to realize we had no clue how to properly hula-hoop and we immediately bonded over our…show more content… When she initially came over, I failed to step outside of my busyness and judgmental mentality to even consider the possibility of us being friends. Yet, in no time we began doing everything together and never spent a day apart. There have been several moments after this when I didn’t see the potential in a situation because I was too tired or caught up in my own busyness. In “Where I Lived, What I Have Lived For”, Thoreau addresses the topic of being alive which has evoked me to think about the way I walk through the world. Despite my own negligence in being awake to the world around me, his words drive me to seek out the potential each day holds. As a result, my actions have become more meaningful and I am less vulnerable to go through the…show more content… When my family first moved into the house we currently live in, our lilac tree was in full bloom and gave of an aroma that perfumed the air. I adored the tree and it shortly became the place that I played and always did homework. Yet last year, every day was as scheduled: go to school, work on the yearbook, go to work, go to volleyball practice, do homework, sleep, and then repeat. In the midst of making sure each of those things was being done, everyday became gradually worse than the one before. For Thoreau, “Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me”, yet when my alarm sounded each morning, I did everything in my power to deny the fact that I had to go through another day. From the middle of April to the end of May, my fatigue and responsibilities consumed me and I never took a step outside of my craziness to see the lilac tree. For over a month I didn’t take a single moment to slow down and live. I pushed life’s simplicities to the side and lived contradictory to how Thoreau would’ve