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Ends.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 5 comments link this postIt's easy to forget that Chris McCandless only speaks to us from the mind of a conflicted youth. He -- and those of use who know his story -- did not have the benefit of getting past an experience and seeing it from ten years on the other side.
His is a story that ended before the loose ends were tied up, a piece of music that ended on a chord of tension that didn't get a chance to resolve before ending. Too many foolish people refuse to enjoy the gift of the song they had the opportunity to hear and instead fret and concentrate on the six measures that they didn't.
"One day, if you're lucky -- you will find yourself withered and old, surrounded by a loving family in a comfortable home, with a heart full of fond memories.
Or you can do what Chris did: Live hard. Die young, and make a pretty corpse. In other words, throw your life away for nothing.
What a waste," Anonymous said.
Lucky? Comfort and fondness are not the end all people wish to have. If we're lucky, we live a life that is rich and honest right now, which has nothing to do with the when and how at the end. If we're lucky, we don't make our comfort and safety at the end of life the goal that defines how we'll live our life.
Waste? What a fool to see waste because of early death, because of not collecting the usual experiences or traveling the usual paths in life. A wasted life can end in comfort, at old age. We mistake brevity and accumulation for waste, as if longevity is the only true sign of a full life!
Throw a life away for nothing? People throw their lives away all the time, for money or a career they hate. People throw their lives away for safety so that they live long, retire, and end up in a home before they die. The manner and time of death has less to do with throwing a life away than what a person does with the few measures of the song they have to work with on this earth. Anyone who leaves a last note and says, as McCandless did, that he "had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all!" did not die in failure or waste.
"... 'the cage' you keep referring to only exists in your own mind," Anonymous said. But I say, what worse place to have a cage, than in the mind? There is no freedom when the mind is held captive. The mind is the ultimate prison.
People, such as Anonymous, seem to think McCandless' story is only about the struggle and the failure to win, instead of considering that his story was more about his hope and his desire to dig deep inside and find that key to the cage in his mind. The human story is not only about the struggle, though I used to think the struggle was the story, wrongly separating a person's hopes "in-midst of" and "in-spite of" and "because-of" as something removed from the struggle.
When I read comments such as were left by Anonymous, I am disheartened. It is yet a reminder to those of us who do not want to live in a "usual" way, those who feel in nearly every moment that we are not yet living life honestly, sacrificing what we know we should do so that we make no one uncomfortable -- it is a reminder that there is no understanding except from those traveling the same road. It is a reminder that being dishonest with ourselves is rewarded by being let alone and in peace.
Some of us are not content to be old, weathered and comfortable. That is never our goal, even if that is how some will find their stories ending. The uncomfortable brings us comfort. It says "you're fighting the fight, you've not given up just yet." It defeats a peculiar and destructive kind of guilt that sometimes drives us with a whip in our mind. We are all, really, trying to find a way to honestly live that will let us live with ourself. Some just trade that in for that peace early in the struggle, shelving hopes in boxes of "wouldn't that have been nice."
"In my book, it's better to live a life full of adventures AND have some nice mementos to commemorate those experiences."
That is your book, Anonymous. Not mine. Sometimes mementos are bricks in a wall. It's fine as long as you exist outside that wall.
Labels: books, essay, personal
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 10/04/2007 10:14:00 AM
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5 Comments:
If Chris McCandless ended his life in suicide, he could not have had a happy life. Suicide is an act of failure, despair, giving up. It's not what people do when they are happy. So when he writes: "had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all!" That's a lie. He's a fraud. He's not honest. His life was not honest. It was driven by fear.
He threw in the towel. To me that's not admirable. The rest of it -- all the "grand search" nonsense -- is rationalization. An inability to forgive the world and its people for being imperfect. An inability to live in the world as it is. To compromise. America was built on compromise.
As for comfort…I don't mind a little comfort myself a difficult world, a world that often seems ruled and driven by all the worst human motivations. A warm shoulder. Shelter from the storm.
There's something wrong with a view that says life has to be a struggle. Should I go without air conditioning? Or running water? Maybe I should chop my own wood or churn my own butter? What for? Progress isn't all bad. How anti-modern do we want to be?
By 
, at
4/10/07 12:05
McCandless didn't commit suicide, though. He was ready to leave the wilderness and was trying to do so but he didn't have a map and didn't know about bridges, etc. to cross the swollen rivers. He died because he accidentally ate a plant that eventually killed his already malnourished body. But what his efforts tell me -- leaving a note on the bus that told potential hikers that he was there and wanted help, his final written thoughts, his efforts to hunt and live off of the land -- was that he wasn't trying to die. He was trying to live.
That's why I don't see his story as a waste or one of giving up. He failed in his efforts to continue living, but he didn't give up.
It isn't about anti-modernity. The concept of "affluenza" ties into this somehow, I think. Modern conveniences are their own problem. It's about drawing lines and stemming the tide of more and newer and better and easier which, for me at least, cause me to lose touch with a sense of reality.
By 
Julie R. Neidlinger, at
4/10/07 16:29
Oh. Well, I haven't read the book, only your descriptions of it. So…
Still…going into the wilderness unprepared…
By , at
4/10/07 17:55
Going into the wilderness unprepared is foolishness. I think too many see the story as that and only that -- foolishness -- and come up with words like "waste" and "stupid" and "death-wish" in talking about McCandless. But if you read the full story...it was a kind of young-man's youthful mistake, dragging in a bag of rice, a shotgun, and some low-quality gear.
Foolish, but it wasn't a wish to die.
That's why I say it's unfortunate that he is forever locked into that moment, that searching time in his life, since he did not live past it. He might have, for example, said "that was a stupid idea." Or not. We'll never know.
By Julie R. Neidlinger, at
4/10/07 18:01
I did not read the book but I have just seen the movie.
I think what McCandless did and the path he had chosen, most of us urbanites can only dream of but will never dare attempt.
Those comments about foolishness, waste, stupid, death-wish etc. are simply that they do not see the PATH that McCandless seek and the value set of individuals. To each his own, who is to say that we are better of alive than McCandless was dead? Did he really die? Physically yes but spiritually I think he had found what he was looking for and I think he had moved to next spiritual level well ahead of most of us or perhaps most of us may never reach that level even at our passing.
What is so wrong to go into the wild unprepared? Are we that prepared living as it is?
By P.C., at
6/7/08 08:07
