“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality, nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit.”

• Christopher McCandless

 

“All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”

• JRR Tolkien

 

At this point in my series on Wonder and Wander I’ve reached some conclusions about drifting off into the world with a sense of acceptance and understanding and getting lost in new concepts and ideas and religions and loves.

I know you didn’t expect to reach part four, reader, and find a sum-it-up conclusion of the first three parts. Sorry about that. But it’s over now, and we can move on.

Let’s start with the first idea I bring up in the quote above. Back when I read Into The Wild I felt that the author spent a lot of time idolizing a young man who chose to abandon his life and find a new one with fewer constrictions. The author, Jon Krakauer, envied the spirit of McCandless and his call to adventure. Krakauer tried to force a number of ties between himself and his subject and those ties are what he expanded on through the book.  I picked the book up to read about McCandless, himself, and instead found a kind of love letter.  In truth, I could relate more to the author of this book than the subject. I felt that same envy toward McCandless and his daring escape from our society. I wanted to wander off into the wild and leave this secure life behind. The only problem was I really didn’t care what kind of adventure Krakauer had gone off on or the type of life-risking adventuring he’d committed to. 

In all actuality I would never abandon my home, my family, my doctors and bank account. I feel safe and secure with those things, just as McCandless tells me I do.  This criticism of my life makes me feel naïve, or like I don’t really know what to do so I just do what everyone else is doing.  I conform.  Everyone else feels safe with a job and a car, so I do, too. And I’m sure that this is damaging to my adventurous spirit. But I’m not as big of a risk-taker as Krakauer.

That being said, the best way that I have found to replenish my adventurous spirit is to lose myself in my surroundings. That’s much easier, and safer. And this is what I want to share with you, reader.  Sometimes, when life is busy and hard and noisy, it’s refreshing to wander off and get lost.  What I mean here is, I try to go without a map.

Take for instance my trip to San Diego this past May. I found a nice little place to stay near the Gaslamp district, close to a main road, and within earshot of the ocean.  This, for me, was a great way to get lost.  We had landmarks, general sense of direction and if need be, we could ask for directions. 

Ah, right there, another perk of traveling without a map.  You meet so many great people when you ask for directions.  The best thing about asking for directions is it’s a great way to break the ice.  I met a terrific woman on this trip by asking her about the San Diego Zoo.

I know what you’re thinking: Getting lost near the main road isn’t really getting lost. Well, stick with me for a moment and we’ll get beyond that thought together.

On our second morning of this trip, my friend and I wandered off in the general direction of downtown in hopes of finding breakfast.  After about forty minutes we wound up in a busy area and hopelessly lost.  Before I could start looking for a landmark or a street sign or grab at anything that would help us get our bearings, my friend had her phone out and started typing away, Googling the location of the restaurant in relation to her GPS on her phone.

This frustrated me. Here I was, an explorer in a new world, and someone was trying to give me a path to follow, a set of goals to achieve, a crayon to color inside the lines with. This frustrated me because I have for a long time now firmly believed that the journey is the point, not the destination.  Cliché, I know. But it’s so true.

At the time I was trying to be nice, and I told her to give me five more minutes before we resort to looking it up. And I found the place.  In those five minutes I actually found the exact restaurant that we had been searching for. And that, that was the greatest sense of accomplishment. We got lost, we used our wits, we didn’t succumb to the evil that is the map of someone else’s journey, and we reached our destination alive!  And the sense of accomplishment overwhelmed me and I truly believe that the breakfast we ate that morning was all the better for it.

Let’s touch on Tolkien here.  The reason I picked the quote above was mainly for the second line, “Not all those who wander are lost”, but then I read the rest of the poem and found sense in the lines around the one I needed.  I do believe that Tolkien had a great sense of adventure.  I mean, you kind’ve have to if you’re going to write Lord of The Rings. What I believe this excerpt from his poem that gains its title from the first line means is that nothing is truly as it appears.

At first glance, the streets of San Diego seem to be a puzzling spatter of lines on a page, but when you get to them, you really find the adventure they offer.  The smells, the tastes, the accents and stories. And the same went for the streets of London when I visited there, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Madrid, Juneau, Dallas, the list goes on and on. 

Speaking of Dallas. When I lived there I dated a girl who used her car’s GPS everywhere she went. She’d been there for nearly her entire life, going on twenty-seven years.  The thing of it is, when she turned the GPS off, which rarely happened, she’d become lost. I spent just over a year in that city and by the end of it I knew the streets better than she ever had, ever would probably. 

At first glance, a map seems like a godsend, something to save us from hurtling off into the night and never being heard from again.  Upon closer inspection, the map, the GPS, the phones that tell us to “make the next legal U-turn” have only a crippling effect.  In this technologically evolved age we are dependent on machines and satellites to tell us where to go and how to go there. We are being drained of our sense of adventure.  I’m being drained of my sense of adventure.  It’s in our roots, our heritage and our generations of experience we gain through family stories, to travel. We have found our way over continents and oceans, through countless storms and beyond too many horizons to just give up now.  It’s the deep roots that are not reached by the frost.  Well, I believe that the frost is coming, and we need to find our roots before they’re lost for good.  Because it’s through these roots that we gain our strength and without them, we’re going to wither.

When I am old, I want to be able to tell my family that I lived a good life and I got lost a whole lot, but I always found my way home.  I want to tell them of the dragons and goblins I fought, I want to tell them about the princesses that I met and the orcs that tried to steal them away from me. I want adventure in my life, reader, and I want that for you, too.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am no Chris McCandless.  Although, I did spend a year in Alaska, and I do tend to wander off from time to time.  I promise, reader, this is not a love letter.

The reason I started this four-part series on Wander and Wonder was because it’s an important subject to me. I love to encourage people to think for themselves, live outside the guidebook of life, take on challenges that might help them grow. That’s why I have written so extensively trying to encourage you to walk around, get lost, meet some new people, get lost with them.  Try new things whenever you can. Eat food that’s against your religion, fight for what you believe rather than what you’re told to believe. It’s your life, not anyone else’s and no one should tell you how you should be doing it. You always have a choice and you always have the option. Try not to get fooled into believing you are stuck in your unhappy circumstances. But it is up to you.  Take the initiative, because I can’t do it for you.

That’s about it, I guess. I want to thank you for reading. You’re really fantastic to make it all the way through my theories and ideas, and I hope you found some encouragement in my words.

Until next time, reader.