Christopher McCandless's life story, originally shared in an Outside Magazine article, then a book and movie, both called Into the Wild, profoundly impacted my life. I idolized him, thinking he had lived ideally, perceiving the ills and hypocrisy of society. Since growing deeper in my faith in Jesus, I haven't read the book or watched the movie. It brings an emotional response to my heart and mind, reminding me how involved I allowed myself to be in his story and the worldview I held at the time. I've found that the tension between it and the Holy Spirit now living in me is untenable, and so it's been years since I learned more of his story or re-watched the movie or reread the book.
Through family interviews, I've learned his shirking of norms and societal expectations was his response to his highly dysfunctional family, especially an abusive father. His journey was not a Walden-esque philosophical one to discover life's true meaning nor how to live life fully by "living off the land" in solitude, appreciating nature. His life is a testament to the need for a healthy father and mother figure. It shaped him in ways I'll never know and can't imagine, for which I'm grateful. He died in August 1992. I used to joke that I was him reincarnate, with dark and self-flattering humor, because I was born less than three weeks before he died. When I first read or watched his story (I can't remember which came first), it affected me in a way that apparently is not unique, though I thought it was. The desire to escape what it's expected of you, the shunning of the 40-hour workweek, living in nature, behaving within your own code of ethics because you've convinced yourself they are irrefutable pillars of absolute truth. It's alluring and simple. But McCandless wasn't the first to think this way, and unfortunately, this newly wedded bride, who died so recently, won't be the last. His story has just been the one to get the spotlight on this type of worldview. The author of Ecclesiastes spoke on it. And if you didn't read the last verse of Ecclesiastes, you would assume its author came to similar conclusions as McCandless.
Ironically, to retrace McCandless's footsteps, taking the remote and dangerous trail to his final resting place, isn't honoring to him. I don't believe he intended to have people copy him - certainly it wasn't to follow him literally. To be inspired by his story misses the underlying root of why he took the path he did in his final two years on earth. He didn't come to the conclusions he did because he sat around philosophizing with scholars. He learned about and personally experienced the depravity of the human condition and came to conclusions about how to live his life to minimize his role in it in the present and the future. When I first found his death site on Google Maps, it was unnerving and heavy to realize it actually happened. Although I didn't travel to Alaska to see it, I imitated his journey and spent a few days on the Appalachian Trail. As God intended, God evidenced Himself to me in a personal way, in a way that McCandless either chose not to see or wasn't looking for.
In your search for ultimate meaning, don't rest it in a mere person. It's not logical or possible that it could reside in one. God always wants people to know Him. I believe He makes Himself obvious to everyone in some way at least once in their lives, even if they barely admit it to themselves.
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