Undergraduate / "Making Thoreau Proud" -- Common App Personal Statement [7]

This is the first draft of my Common App Personal Statement. I would really appreciate any grammar, syntax, or structure critiques you can give. Thank you!

I woke up, almost mechanically, as I had done every weekday prior. Yet, this morning I was more hesitant to spend my day vapidly, unaware of the purposes of my actions. My mind was held captive by my English teacher's proposition to escape society's preconceptions and venture out to discover the true nature of our being. The inspiration for the proposal stemmed from the pursuit of consciousness in the novel, Walden, in which Henry David Thoreau presents the demand for individual self-awareness. I understood that my teacher's challenge was intended to be hypothetical, presented merely to provoke intellectual discussion; however, it had planted the seed of curiosity in my mind and like a Valley Oak acorn during the first rain of the season, that seed took root in my soul and grew rapidly in my conscience. This morning I broke free from the mechanical routine and chose to literally go to the woods, not in hopes of reliving Thoreau's own experience, but in hopes of creating my own.

I have always felt at home when surrounded by trees and soil; beauty in its most simplistic form. Perhaps this is because nature allows us to escape from the perils of industrialization. We allow ourselves to become vulnerable to the poison that is human disposition; we become too caught up in what society expects from us and concentrate too heavily on how to manipulate the fate of our futures. Yet, when alone in nature, there are no expectations and the future is nothing but an inevitable force. The focus becomes entirely on the present and your mind is let free to wander aimlessly through the depths of life that surround you.

So as I ventured into the woods today, I guarded my mind from the world I was leaving and for a few hours surrendered it to the mysterious environment around me. I searched for the facts of life in the yucca plants, the purpose of our existence in the oak leaves, what life has to teach us in the sycamores. Yet, these wise natives turned me in a direction I was not expecting. I skipped school to discover the true meaning of my life and subsequently found that the path toward discovery is, in fact, the true meaning. My story is not already written, it is only a few chapters through. However, the sacrifices I make to write my story are what give my life a purpose. I believe that, ironically, we live in order to die with a story. We follow Thoreau's footsteps into the woods, or wherever our heart leads us, and we discover on our own how our story will be written.