Into the Wild

I just completed watching the movie "Into The Wild" filmed by Sean Penn. It's a movie based on the best-selling book of the same title by Jon Krakauer. A biography of sorts of young Christopher Johnson McCandless, it shows the gradual journey of Chris into the wild, both mentally and physically. Beautifully shot with almost aesthetic renditions of various locations in Alaska, Arizona and Dakota, it's close to being a cinematic phenom.

No jarring special effects to mar the sensibilities of Chris's foray into the unknown, away from securities and love, something's special. Laced with innumerable shots that pull at strings of your heart, it provided me with food for thought to start considering a long hiatus from societal life and its nuances.

I've always had a penchant for seeing new places, places devoid of w humanity where the blighted touch of development hasn't yet taken its toll. There's a sense of freedom in what we can do out there, in the wild. No one sees me, no one judges me, I live my own life, as I like it, none to satisfy, none to please, stuff that dreams are made of. In society, I am a servant, a servant to other people's whims and fancies. I don't lead my own life; society directs me to lead life as it pleases. Who laid out these ways of life? I certainly didn't, nor would I ever expect anyone to lead it, as I feel right to lead mine.

Everyone's different; lead it the way you want to, not the manner in which society wants. I wish people wou

d understand. Education, jobs, money, security, how does any of this matter? To what end do we work on these things all through our life? I ask you. Is it the want to lead the "good life", a life full of security where you know what's going to happen next? Nothing's a surprise for you; you have planned it inside out. Is this it? You say yes. But why? What do you achieve in security? No fear of danger, loss? Don't you understand that those are the things, which make our lives; we are born to lead life in that manner. Its human nature to lead a life that is constantly changing. Without change, the mind ceases to be the wonder that is.

Look around you; see the buildings, shops, offices, and factories. Do they excite you? They do not. Imagine the countryside, through which you may have once passed, imagine the mountains where you maybe gone for a hike, imagine the beach; imagine anything that is nature, and you. No one's there with you, no family, no friends, and no one at all. How would you feel? A sense of oneness with nature, a peculiar feeling in the mind that's hard to explain but at the same time intoxicating. That's nature for you, my friend. You maybe anyone, a teenager, an old man in the dusk of his life, or a middle-aged person, you may be a woman, a man, a black, a white, a Caucasian or a Negroid, it doesn't matter, everyone is different and everyone is same.

No matter what you do, how important is the job that you do; you owe yourself at least one foray into the wild. Then you experience the true meaning of life. Do not make excuses, no matter how important you are, someone in this world is there who can fill your shoes. Money doesn't matter, riches doesn't matter. You don't have to prepare for the journey, for the time that you will be out of the security of your social life. Just go out on an impulse, no planning. Go where the road leads you. If you plan there you do it again, afraid of the unknown and thus trying to find security. Once you come back, the realization will sink in that life's out there, in the unknown, in the wild.