Into the Wild

A few years ago I read the book Waking the Dead by John Eldridge. Few books have really changed my perspective on life and spirituality as much it did. I've always been a reader, and I've loved stories for long before I learned to read. I love that stories and books take me to another world, make a different life real to me. For as long as I can remember I've dreamed about being a part of one of my stories. Even well into my teens I imagined myself as a characters in my favorite books. By the time I started college, intellectualism had become the altar on which I worshipped, and I forced those silly thoughts out of my head, abandoning imagination as a childish tendency. Then I read Waking the Dead. Eldridge actually uses fairy tales and epic stories to tell truths about God and life! Suddenly it was okay to imagine that I am part of a greater story. Not just okay, but healthy, and enlightening.

I'm an adventurer at heart. I often imagine that if I had enough cash to pay off my debt, I would free myself from this prison of materialism, competition, and greed and hit the road, catch a train, sail to the ends of the earth. It's an entirely romantic notion to live with that kind of freedom. Free from time and obligation.

Last night my sister and I attended a showing of Into the Wild at CU. It's based on the book by the same title by John Krakauer about Christopher McCandless, a 23 year old college graduate who hitchhikes to Alaska as an attempt to experience the world as nature intends and escape a painful home life. His entire journey makes a wonderful and tragic adventure. "For two years he walks the earth. Ultimate freedom."

The whole time I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to leave everything behind and venture into the wild myself. Wonderment became desire and desire, longing, then finally desperation.

After I dropped my sister off, I cried the entire ride home. Not just cried, but wept, sobbed. I was overcome by this sense that I am missing something in my life. I am tethered to this pile of debt and obligation that is preventing me from living the life I was created to live. Even now, the lump in my throat is growing as I think about all the time I've wasted. I want so much more out of life, but I feel like it is just beyond my grasp. There is so much world out there, and I am missing it.