Into The Wild

Was an aboslutely AMAZING movie! Wow..I seem to be posting journals quite often now, aren't I?

ANYWAY. The point is that it's not only a good story (mostly because..well..it ACTUALLY HAPPENED), but it's a story with a meaning. In fact, it's a story about a guy who went searching for HIS meaning.

I know it was originally a book, which I definitely need to read. I didn't 'cause I had to read Tuesdays With Morrie instead. That's also a very good book.

But! The point remains that this story of Chris McCandless leaving society to try to survive in the wild is..well..just fascinating. He meets amazing people along the way, and experiences amazing things. And at the same time, you grow to understand why it is he felt he needed to leave.

His whole life, he felt he was just a lie. His father was still legally married to another woman, and he had a legal child. This technically made him a Bastard Child. And then, on top of that, his parents fought. All the time. There was one scene that just hit me so hard, mostly 'cause I felt I could liken it *almost* to my own experience. His father and mother got into a huge fight, and it started to get to the point where the father was beating the mother up. But what hit me hard was when he (Chris) grabbed his little sister and pulled her away so she wouldn't have to see. He just looked so much like my own brother at that point, who also kind of pulled me away from my parents' fighting. I seriously almost broke down in the theatre. >.<

And just, all these things in his life, on top of just naturally being a free spirit, led to him wanting to go as far away as he possibly could. He went off into the middle of Alaskan wilderness. Because he wanted to be free from the cage of modern society. He got his college education, now it was time for him to find a meaning to his life. He probably felt that until he did that, he could not exist in society. Chances are, he needed to find meaning to his life in such an extreme way because he felt the meaning to his life had been taking from hin in such an extreme way.

And so he travels all over the country, readying himself for the ultimate goal. The goal to withstand the extreme. And he just seems so happy in the wilderness, returning to what we Humans started out as. A being that is fascinated by what's around him, not by what's in his hands.

Which, I think was the first bit of meaning I really pulled out of this. That sometimes we need to refer back to our primal state to find just the simple wonders in the world.

Also, Chris discovered several other things (which, by the way, were so clearly put out there that they're impossible to miss). He found that everything needs to be called it's true name. That you can change the name of something or someone as many times as you want, but the true spirit of it/them is with their real name.

Also, he found that loneliness comes from not being able to share your happiness with someone. He was happy for a long time in the wilderness. But when he was ready to go back, he had been trapped by the flooded rivers. I think it was then that he realized that he wouldn't get the chance to truly share his experiences (ironic that in his getting trapped and dying there, he still did..isn't it?). He found that people really need someone that they can share their excitement with, or else that excitement is put to waste.

But he also learned from others, too. Chris, who went by Alex Supertramp for most of the movie, learned about forgiving others, about making home in your heart, about loving others, and about needing to be loved in return. In the end, he said he lived a happy life. He died in an unhappy state, having accidentally ingested a poisonous plant mistaking it for its cousin. The poison caused him to die from starvation.

But even though he was in an unhappy state, I wouldn't say that he died an unhappy man. I think he died happy, having found his meaning to life. He died having discovered many things and having experienced truly spectacular things. He died, forgiving his parents and knowing deep down that he had been loved. I'd say he died happy, ready to embrace the next adventure, having found that, at least to him, the meaning to life was to find the meaning to your own life and put even more meaning to it.

And he did put meaning to it. He's created a story for all of us to learn from. By doing what he did, he's shown us what it's like to be out there and told us where the real happiness lies.

Oh, by the way. Did I mention this had spoilers? ^__^