About Me

Bangalore, Karnataka, India
I am .........well i always wonder , seems like thats what i am here for in this world

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Wild or Life

Ever thought about running away from home .
Ever thought about going far away where no one can reach you .
Ever thought about leading a life for yourself .
Ever thought about finding the truth about life .


Well i do think about this every now and then . Especially questioning , why should we lead our lives by some rules of LIFE ( SOCEITY is the appropriate word ). Education , degree ,career ,family ,success , death . Is this what life is all about? Guess I am on the lines of my very first post The Awakening .


I won't bore you readers with my intriguing philosophy , I will just narrate a story.

I shall name the protagonist as 'Supertramp' .
Supertramp was a strongwilled person , a great athlete , a leader in his college days .
He came from an upper middleclass family , his father worked for NASA , his mother worked for Hughes aircraft and he had a younger sister.

His academic success and his background made him show contempt for the soceity , the materialistic world. This urges him to abandon this materialistic ,conventional world .
He sets out into the wild with courage ,idealism , willpower ,spirit to know the truth about life. He destroys his credit cards ,money(burns them) and donates his savings to charity .
He doesn't tell his family about where he is going .

He starts his journey to reach alaska where he feels true knowledge will be found . He gets caught in a flash flood , he abandons his car .He comes across a hippie couple who are friendly and he spends little time with them . He then journeys ahead and starts working in a farm to make a living and learns about farming and he moves on after the farmer gets arrested . He forays into the colarado river illegaly and gets to mexico . Later on travels back to LA in a goods train . He feels an urge to call home but he withdraws the idea . He meets up with an old leather worker who wants to adopt him but supertramp moves on .

After two years of abandoning his conventional life , he reaches alaska and comes across a dirty neglected school bus and makes it his home and names it the ' Magic Bus' .
He starts hunting rabbits , other animals and feeds on them . He is spellbound by the beauty , the silence ,the nature . He keeps a diary for filling his thoughts , reads books about the wild , the flora and fauna . By and by his supplies run out and he decides to cross the stream but the current of the stream bars the way . So he returns and tries to live on some plants and berries but he makes a costly mistake and consumes a poisoned wild pea instead of a wild potato and thus he dies of starvation .


This is not just a story but a 'Real- life Story' of Christopher Johnson McCandless , a man who believed in himself to reach the truth of life . He eventually writes in his journal 'Happiness is real when shared'


I salute this man for his courage ,endurance ,patience , idealism and many things more .
And he was merely 24 years when he died .
And he called himself Alexander Supertramp.

Here are some quotes of Christopher McCandless from his diary .


Christopher McCandless: Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness… give me truth.

Christopher McCandless: I’m supertramp.
[looks at apple]
Christopher McCandless: and you’re super apple!

Christopher McCandless: The core of mans’ spirit comes from new experiences.

Christopher McCandless: Conscious attention to the basics of life, and a constant attention to your immediate environment and its concerns, example- A job, a task, a book; anything requiring efficient concentration (Circumstance has no value. It is how one relates to a situation that has value. All true meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomenon, what it means to you).

Christopher McCandless: I read somewhere… how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong… but to feel strong.

Christopher McCandless: Some people feel like they don’t deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.

Christopher McCandless: If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.

Christopher McCandless: What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?



I just love this quote .....................


“The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”





Courtesy : Into the Wild movie directed by Sean Penn(must watch if you liked the story)
Googled the quotes.

PS : Thanks to a friend of mine who suggested this movie to me . Thank you and here is a review(sort of) of the movie you asked.

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