You will never become anything, and that is your reward
To some that title will be shocking. It wasn’t uttered sarcastically either as the above video illustrates. In my opinion it’s actually a pretty hard task to never become anything in our Society. Every decision we make corrals us into a bracket with a series of parameters that need to be adhered to. Every day we work in a given job we become more and more likely to continue to spend our lives working in that same line of work. Fear of insecurity makes us do it to ourselves. In general we don’t like to feel insecure. However, living right on the cusp of my fears and always feeling a little insecure is where I, personally, have found I grow the most. “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” - Helen Keller This brings me to a thought I’ve been having lately in regards to setting goals for oneself. I’ve tried to put some form to it as every time I bring it up in conversation it is met with much consternation. Expect me to revisit the subject in the future. My thoughts are that Goals are a bad thing. But only a particular type of goal. Let me elaborate. The word “goal” has a pretty broad definition. We’re in a New Year now (gosh is it February already!) and people ask “What are your goals for this year, or, your New Year Resolutions?”. For me I’ve got a series of expectations for myself this year. I’d like to do a sustained technical route on a large mountain. I’d like to lead a multi-pitch rock climb. I’d like to get better at Down Hill MTB. There are a few peaks and hikes that I’d like to visit also. There’s also my endeavor to drop my body weight below 170lbs and run in the Squamish50 23km race as written about here So I have a bunch of goals you could say. But why do I want to achieve them? This is the crucial part. I want to achieve them because I believe I will feel more fulfilled by doing so, that it will help me grow as a person and that reaching these goals will be a source of happiness for me. So, in short, for me Reaching Goals = Fulfillment + Growth + Happiness. One problem with the mentality behind setting some goals for ourselves is that we can potentially imprison ourselves within the parameters of that goal. The further away in...
Into the Wild: the film, book and idea
I understood what he was doing, that he had spent four years fulfilling the absurd and tedious duty of graduating from college and now he was emancipated from that world of abstraction, false security, parents, and material excess. ― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild Will contain spoilers, you’ve been warned. Time changes a person. When I first watched “Into the wild” back in 2007 I was working in IT, playing video games in my spare time and trying to do as much as possible to remain stationary 7 days a week. I had no interest in the great outdoors and couldn’t understand individuals who did. So when I watched the film “Into the wild”, directed by Sean Penn and starring Emile Hirsch, I couldn’t believe that this individual had so selfishly ended his life. He’d ignorantly walked into the wild without training or proper equipment and died when an individual with even a modicum of sense wouldn’t have. It left me slightly angry that this story would even be worth writing about, let alone get turned into a movie. Fast forward to 2010. I moved from Ireland with my wife on a whim to seek out adventure in Canada. I didn’t know what awaited me there, I just needed to do something different. I guess spending most of my time motionless for so many years had left me feeling like my life was also standing still. I discovered the outdoors and embraced it. My perceptions changed steadily, almost, unnoticeably, so in 2012, while looking for a book to take out at the library (yes people still use those) I seen “Into the wild” by Jon Krakauer. Back in 2007, Krakauer was an unknown to me, but now, in 2012 he is someone I know a fair bit about due to our mutual love of mountaineering and high peaks. Truthfully, I hadn’t thought much about the story of Christopher McCandless since 2007. It was only upon seeing the book on the shelf by the same name that the memories of how angry I’d felt about that movie flooded back into my mind. It was like these were the memories of somebody else, somebody I no longer recognized. The person I am now does nothing but dream about the wild and being surrounded by it. I stare over at the hills and peaks that surround the town where I live and wish to go there always. I felt I needed to revisit this story again, to get a fresh perspective on it, so I rented out the book. I read through it pretty fast, which is unusual for me as I can take a year or more to read a short book. I...
