What we need is a shift in thought if we're ever to escape the stuff trap. The money, the material goods are nothing to Thoreau. They cannot solve any problems, especially those they create. He admires the penniless saying "the town's poor seem to me to often live the most independent lives of any." They are not tied down by having too much stuff, one of the things Thoreau was looking for in going to the woods. I think he counts himself as one of those poor, since his idea of living deliberately is as much about avoiding false expectations as anything else. If we teach ourselves to be content with what we have, and intentionally be grateful for simple blessings, we may find that "a quiet mind may live as contentedly [in poverty], and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace." The people I see around me everyday have many things, and so do I, but I don't know that a quiet mind could be counted among them.

So, as much as Thoreau drones on about things like his bean garden and the ice on Walden Pond, his point becomes clear in the end. Happiness is only found in a peaceful mind, and that can only be reached through simplicity. In fact, the pages he spends describing innocuous things like ants, the depth of the pond, or the mice under his house are meant as object lessons. Not only do these things show Thoreau living the prescribed life, but it allows us to do the same through the act of reading about something we might never stop to observe. If Thoreau did indeed have a mission with this book (though he swears he didn't), I think it was to lead by example and show us that while we don't all need to move to the woods, we should remember that "money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul." It's wisdom the 21st century could well use.