In "The Buried Life," Matthew Arnold urges us to ignore the head-spinning, ceaseless flux of our everyday existence and instead look within ourselves to find a deeper meaning to life. Invariably, our busy lives are not the ones we would've chosen for ourselves; we have been diverted from what Arnold calls "our true, original course." Because we're so caught up in the daily grind, we never have the time to stop and think and ask ourselves if this is what we really want out of life, if this is the correct path we should be following.

As in his most famous poem "Dover Beach," Arnold wants us to be true to ourselves, true to the hidden self that lies buried deep within us. But for too many of us, this proves an impossible task. Try as we might, we're unable to articulate the "nameless feelings that course through our breast." The truth is there inside us; it always has been and always will be. But because modern life has rendered us incapable of expressing those feelings in any meaningful sense, we carry on as before, plodding along life's lonely highway, leading lives of soul-numbing inauthenticity.

It is only in those all-too-rare moments of transcendence, such as when we experience the gentle touch of a beloved's hand, that we are able to escape from the hustle and bustle of daily life. Then we see ourselves for who and what we really are. And in such moments of profound revelation, the world too is transformed, standing before us in all its natural splendor and beauty, joining with our liberated souls to form an organic unity in which the hitherto buried self of man and nature become as one.