7/5 - thankful for insomnia so i can finally write again
I'm not writing a blog.
It's really late but it feels like the middle of the daytime, and my fingers were itching to tap on this keyboard. I happened to be signed on here. I was reading one of my favorite books of all time- "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer hoping that it will lull me to a state and then I can finish off the day by listening to some Script and One Republic, maybe Taeyang before I peacefully doze off and dream about honeydew bubble tea. That didn't happen. I couldn't stop thinking about the guy in the book- the 24 year old who thought he had the whole world figured out, and so head strong that it cost him his life. What a pathetic way to die, I thought, he could have completely avoided this fate if he opened his mind a little. Chris McCandless has been stuck in my conscience ever since I read this book for the first time a while ago. He was the one who gave me my college essay topic and idea that I centered my philosophical thoughts around: Happiness is only real when it is shared with others.
Sadly he didn't realize that until he was on the verge of death. How did he die? Well despite the fact that he was alone by himself in the middle of nowhere wilderness, Alaska, living in an abandoned bus with nothing but a few pounds of rice, too weak to hunt for game, and trapped in the wilderness- he also consumed a misidentified berry or mushroom that he thought to be edible, except it wasn't. Autopsy confirmed that he died from starvation, but that was only a small part of it. Most of what killed him was the fact that he was alone. He had been severed from society, any form of human contact for several months. He was trapped by a raging current of river that came alive when the ice thawed out in the summer. He couldn't cross, he couldn't leave.
The problem stemmed from his own perplexing personality that even I don't really understand, and his conflicts with his father and with authority in general. He lived by the words of his literary idols: Jack London, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, etc. I think his entire life philosophy centered around his political position which can be summed up with an excerpt from Thoreau: "That government is best which governs least." He was very close minded, but very intelligent, people warmed up to him quickly and he did well in anything he tried, his ambitions were as high and bright as the moon. I don't agree with most of his actions and thoughts, I think he's too black and white in thinking, he's contradicting, and too passionate for his own good. He thought he could end racism in South Africa when he was only in high school. Whereas I wrote a strongly opinionated essay about how world hunger can never be solved in high school. We are opposites and alike, but more so the former.
I'm too afraid and too sympathetic for my parents to erase them from my life just like that, they raised me and the least I can do is to stay alive and be well. Chris thought none of that, because of his father's double-timing with his mother and his previous wife, Chris bottled up his anger like he always does and he eventually couldn't deal with it anymore. So right after graduating from Emory with a near perfect GPA (and false hopes with his parents that he would go on to law school), he set on his transamerica trip without telling his family anything, and that would eventually leave him rotting inside an abandoned bus across the continent. He never kept in touch with his parents. Not even with his sister whom he was extremely close to.
What he wanted to do is to prove (I don't know to who) that he can make it on his own in the wild. No technology, no human beings. Just him, a 25-pound bag of rice, some hardware and tools, shit tons of books (among them one about edible berries and plants), and a gun. Maybe some more camping stuff but essentially that was it. He is such a romantic, to the point of lunacy. Jon Krakauer also mentioned him as a Realist at one point when he started hunting game...not sure what that's about. Because Chris definitely was in his own dreamland where as long as he set his heart on something, nothing can ever go wrong. He was so blinded by his ambitions and excitement that he overlooks the little things. In his case, the little berry that he ate which put an end to his experiment of self worth. Or whatever he was trying to accomplish. I had a feeling that Krakauer was implying his naiveté about the wilderness, camping, and life in general throughout the book. I find his tone amusing because I think the exact same thing.
Chris looked down on wealth and all those materialistic things, and when his parents started to purchase luxury items like a Cadillac, he became angry. He used to go to the bad parts of downtown and talk to prostitutes, the homeless, that type of people and buy them food. He thought he was the ultimate philanthropist. Even going so far as to give all $25,000 of his savings to charity. The thing I find so pitiful and pathetic is that he had such a great mind. He was a natural businessman, he taught his mother how to run her and her husband's business and all the experience he had was selling vegetables, working for a construction company, and delivering Dominoes pizza. He had to go travel across the fucking country to I don't even understand what he was looking for. I understand the need to get away and be alone without authority but sometimes restrictions are good for a person so they don't go all out wild like Chris did, but he needed to have a little more reasoning. The problems of your life won't go away if you just backpack across the country like a nomad for 2 years.
He became close with a lot of people during his travels, remember he can make anyone fond of him. One old guy even asked Chris to become his adopted grandson, but Chris being Chris avoided the question saying, "We'll talk about it once I get back from Alaska." He didn't want to get close to anyone, he liked society and being with people but as soon as he felt settled in, he leaves and moves somewhere else. Also, he was too excited for Alaska that he barely had the heart to care for anything else. As soon as he found the abandoned bus, he wrote a declaration of independence for himself:
Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "The West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by the civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become Lost in the Wild.
The ironic thing about this is, he was actually poisoned by his own solitude. But you know, he does have life figured out and everything. That's why he packed up and ran to Alaska so he can live in a freaking bus and die. Okay I'm being harsh, but he deserved everything that happened to him. Because it was his fault and no one else' that he ended up where he ended up. His parents don't understand why he did this which is the worst part for them. Everyone he's ever met wasn't crazy about his idea but they trusted him because he was supposedly good at everything he did, also because there was no stopping him. He just wouldn't listen to anybody else. It was by his own actions and decisions and thick-headedness that he died by eating a poisonous berry even with a wild berry and plant guide that he's been studying.
His death angers me, it shouldn't, why should I care about a dumbass guy who is so delusional that unicorns can fucking exist if he wanted them to, that left his well-off life for no reason other than some grudge from the past and hate for authority. But things like this, unnecessary bullshit just pisses me off. In the end he smartened up, but the keyword here is "the end." At this point I think he was trying to find a certain pure strain of happiness. He marked a passage by Tolstoy:
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work, which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor--such is my idea of happiness. And then on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps--what more can the heart of a man desire?
He is finally coming to his senses, eh? And another he marked in Doctor Zhivago that taught me the idea that I embrace today:
"And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness... And this was most vexing of all," he noted, "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED."
Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
It's really late but it feels like the middle of the daytime, and my fingers were itching to tap on this keyboard. I happened to be signed on here. I was reading one of my favorite books of all time- "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer hoping that it will lull me to a state and then I can finish off the day by listening to some Script and One Republic, maybe Taeyang before I peacefully doze off and dream about honeydew bubble tea. That didn't happen. I couldn't stop thinking about the guy in the book- the 24 year old who thought he had the whole world figured out, and so head strong that it cost him his life. What a pathetic way to die, I thought, he could have completely avoided this fate if he opened his mind a little. Chris McCandless has been stuck in my conscience ever since I read this book for the first time a while ago. He was the one who gave me my college essay topic and idea that I centered my philosophical thoughts around: Happiness is only real when it is shared with others.
Sadly he didn't realize that until he was on the verge of death. How did he die? Well despite the fact that he was alone by himself in the middle of nowhere wilderness, Alaska, living in an abandoned bus with nothing but a few pounds of rice, too weak to hunt for game, and trapped in the wilderness- he also consumed a misidentified berry or mushroom that he thought to be edible, except it wasn't. Autopsy confirmed that he died from starvation, but that was only a small part of it. Most of what killed him was the fact that he was alone. He had been severed from society, any form of human contact for several months. He was trapped by a raging current of river that came alive when the ice thawed out in the summer. He couldn't cross, he couldn't leave.
The problem stemmed from his own perplexing personality that even I don't really understand, and his conflicts with his father and with authority in general. He lived by the words of his literary idols: Jack London, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, etc. I think his entire life philosophy centered around his political position which can be summed up with an excerpt from Thoreau: "That government is best which governs least." He was very close minded, but very intelligent, people warmed up to him quickly and he did well in anything he tried, his ambitions were as high and bright as the moon. I don't agree with most of his actions and thoughts, I think he's too black and white in thinking, he's contradicting, and too passionate for his own good. He thought he could end racism in South Africa when he was only in high school. Whereas I wrote a strongly opinionated essay about how world hunger can never be solved in high school. We are opposites and alike, but more so the former.
I'm too afraid and too sympathetic for my parents to erase them from my life just like that, they raised me and the least I can do is to stay alive and be well. Chris thought none of that, because of his father's double-timing with his mother and his previous wife, Chris bottled up his anger like he always does and he eventually couldn't deal with it anymore. So right after graduating from Emory with a near perfect GPA (and false hopes with his parents that he would go on to law school), he set on his transamerica trip without telling his family anything, and that would eventually leave him rotting inside an abandoned bus across the continent. He never kept in touch with his parents. Not even with his sister whom he was extremely close to.
What he wanted to do is to prove (I don't know to who) that he can make it on his own in the wild. No technology, no human beings. Just him, a 25-pound bag of rice, some hardware and tools, shit tons of books (among them one about edible berries and plants), and a gun. Maybe some more camping stuff but essentially that was it. He is such a romantic, to the point of lunacy. Jon Krakauer also mentioned him as a Realist at one point when he started hunting game...not sure what that's about. Because Chris definitely was in his own dreamland where as long as he set his heart on something, nothing can ever go wrong. He was so blinded by his ambitions and excitement that he overlooks the little things. In his case, the little berry that he ate which put an end to his experiment of self worth. Or whatever he was trying to accomplish. I had a feeling that Krakauer was implying his naiveté about the wilderness, camping, and life in general throughout the book. I find his tone amusing because I think the exact same thing.
Chris looked down on wealth and all those materialistic things, and when his parents started to purchase luxury items like a Cadillac, he became angry. He used to go to the bad parts of downtown and talk to prostitutes, the homeless, that type of people and buy them food. He thought he was the ultimate philanthropist. Even going so far as to give all $25,000 of his savings to charity. The thing I find so pitiful and pathetic is that he had such a great mind. He was a natural businessman, he taught his mother how to run her and her husband's business and all the experience he had was selling vegetables, working for a construction company, and delivering Dominoes pizza. He had to go travel across the fucking country to I don't even understand what he was looking for. I understand the need to get away and be alone without authority but sometimes restrictions are good for a person so they don't go all out wild like Chris did, but he needed to have a little more reasoning. The problems of your life won't go away if you just backpack across the country like a nomad for 2 years.
He became close with a lot of people during his travels, remember he can make anyone fond of him. One old guy even asked Chris to become his adopted grandson, but Chris being Chris avoided the question saying, "We'll talk about it once I get back from Alaska." He didn't want to get close to anyone, he liked society and being with people but as soon as he felt settled in, he leaves and moves somewhere else. Also, he was too excited for Alaska that he barely had the heart to care for anything else. As soon as he found the abandoned bus, he wrote a declaration of independence for himself:
Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "The West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by the civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become Lost in the Wild.
The ironic thing about this is, he was actually poisoned by his own solitude. But you know, he does have life figured out and everything. That's why he packed up and ran to Alaska so he can live in a freaking bus and die. Okay I'm being harsh, but he deserved everything that happened to him. Because it was his fault and no one else' that he ended up where he ended up. His parents don't understand why he did this which is the worst part for them. Everyone he's ever met wasn't crazy about his idea but they trusted him because he was supposedly good at everything he did, also because there was no stopping him. He just wouldn't listen to anybody else. It was by his own actions and decisions and thick-headedness that he died by eating a poisonous berry even with a wild berry and plant guide that he's been studying.
His death angers me, it shouldn't, why should I care about a dumbass guy who is so delusional that unicorns can fucking exist if he wanted them to, that left his well-off life for no reason other than some grudge from the past and hate for authority. But things like this, unnecessary bullshit just pisses me off. In the end he smartened up, but the keyword here is "the end." At this point I think he was trying to find a certain pure strain of happiness. He marked a passage by Tolstoy:
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work, which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor--such is my idea of happiness. And then on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps--what more can the heart of a man desire?
He is finally coming to his senses, eh? And another he marked in Doctor Zhivago that taught me the idea that I embrace today:
"And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness... And this was most vexing of all," he noted, "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED."
Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer