I Now Walk into the Wild..
“you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.” – Chris McCandless
December 28, 2015- A few weeks ago I read John Krauker's “Into the Wild”. The book tells the story of Chris McCandless- a young man with a deep yearning for adventure- and his journey to his dream destination: the Alaskan Wilderness.
The adventure leads ultimately to McCandless’ death but Krauker, possibly seeing something of himself with how Chris sees the world, made the readers understand the wild, wild heart of Chris even for a bit. But told in the point of view of the author from the accounts of various people who know Chris and from the things he left behind (letters, books with notes and highlighted passages, graffiti, postcards, and journal entries), we can only infer about what is truly happening inside of McCandless until his unfortunate death during his grand adventure.
Part of me admires the courage of McCandless. Not everyone can abandon a comfortable life and go of wandering to the unknown; not everyone can go against what our society calls a “normal life” which means a secured job with a salary that permits one to buy whatever he wants , a home one can go to after, a partner- just to pursue his passion. In part, his story is truly inspiring especially to those of us who are deep inside, free spirits but are scared to leave the norms from which we grew-up.
In one of his letters McCandless eloquently wrote:
“make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt…The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”
I will never do what Chris did. I cannot abandon everything, especially family and friends that I hold dear. But in the spirit of Chris McCandless and many other explorers with a burning passion to travel, to discover, to see, I model myself this 2016 and the years after that. The world is so big. There are so many things to see, to understand, and most importantly, to feel. There are so many people to get to know and I don’t want all these just to pass me by.
The year is nearly at its end and as I reflect on what happened to me this 2015, I realized more than ever, that I want to know the mountains deeper. I want to hike and feel my spirits soar not merely because I am seeing a grand view but because I am in a mountain. I want to be stronger and fitter, I want to push myself and discover that I am more than my limits and fears.
I don’t know where these decisions will lead. I am terribly frightened! Currently my mind is firing up a lot of questions that I cannot answer. I am so unsure- will I be able to do it? Am I that strong of mind and body? But my heart. Oh my heart! Even before I’ve come to know it, my heart has long been certain, it knows what it wants. It will not be easy, I know. It will come with a lot of pain and I will probably hurt some people - but this is really my dream. No matter how dramatic and romantic this may sound- this, this dream is my “Ess muss ein”.
I don’t want to make my heart wait too long anymore because it might get tired and forget. I want to make my dreams happen. I want to take action. And with this, I now walk into the wilderness of my own heart and follow the trails leading to the many summits of my dreams.
