Recently, I made a trip to an area neighbouring the city. I had expected to escape the bustle of the metropolis and soak in the undisturbed beauty of nature. However, while I was staying at a villa in the woods, I found myself still pondering the trivial business of daily life. This brought me to the realization that I live in the busy mundane world, and my heart would always be there.

How many of us have once thrown ourselves into the bosom of nature and later hurried back to the city life we have been so familiar with? Although we might swarm into these places with the fairest purposes, our minds and lives are still far away. Three years ago, when I first came across "Walden" by Thoreau, I was deeply moved by his thoughts.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

It is difficult to be a hermit these days. To live deliberately, a person must live with people and struggle to have his status acknowledged by society. Those who wanted to follow Thoreau's idea to live with the sun, moon and stars are either labelled crack-brained or accused of being "skulkers" who neglected their social responsibilities.

For many, nature has become just a travel destination, a temporary residence or even something to be possessed as private property to show one's wealth and prosperity. A walk in the woods therefore has become merely a sensory pleasure instead of a search for spiritual enlightenment. We have no time to perceive the nature of the universe or the nature of ourselves. With days flying, we have no time to pause and to think.

While the majority of people of Thoreau's time were scrambling for their fame and wealth and sparing no efforts to make themselves somebody out of nobody, Thoreau, the hermit who had exiled himself in the woods had amazingly had greater influence upon modern history than most aggressive politicians and economists. In 1849 he wrote Civil Disobedience, which Gandi drew upon in developing his own doctrine of passive resistance. Later in the United States, Jefferson, for example, opened the Declaration of Independence with an appeal to the "self-evident" truths of the Moral Law Thoreau had advocated.

Thoreau has much to teach us today. I am not advocating that we should all go back to the woods and forests and record our thoughts in a journal that extends to many volumes. But, since life is short and our years are numbered, how can we live most abundantly? All of us need some time to think about the values we should live by.