Into the Wild

I watched Into the Wild last night, can I just say my soul was just flying while watching the beautiful cinematography. I’m definitely one of those people that will see something beautiful and feel the need to tell someone about it, like the sun reflecting off of Mount Hood in a special way or the moon shadows over the Puget Sound. Take for instance driving through the mountains at sunset, which sunsets always get better and better…I’ll probably comment at least twenty times out loud how beautiful it is and twenty more times to myself. So you can only imagine how many times I had to comment on how beautiful the shots were throughout the movie. I did try to keep them to a minimum to keep from being that girl who interrupts the movie every few minutes. But really, the cinematography had me giddy. AND the soundtrack, too! Eddie Vedder is incredible in this soundtrack. I had to comment on the beauty of the music throughout the movie, too. Yes, I did turn out to be that girl during this movie, shoot…

Anyhoo, after watching the movie, I am SO ready for adventure. I want to go “into the wild”, maybe not to the extent as the guy from the movie so as to be shooting and butchering a moose to live on and living by myself in an abandoned bus in rural Alaska in the dead of winter, but a milder version of this would be incredible, to get out of myself and experience the world and everything in it.

I think I’ll be marinating on that entire movie for a while, but the feelings it left me with have been nipping at my heels all day. The song society, by Eddie Vedder is so telling of the world we live in. Society. I feel so boxed in by society, boxed in and cattle-herded toward the American Dream. My life can’t be fulfilling unless I have a six-figure income, a fancy car and vacation homes. I can’t be happy unless I have a model’s body, a designer wardrobe and a great tan. I need to make more money to buy a bigger house and more things to fill my bigger house. I need to work more so I can take luxury vacations but with all the hours I put in to earn my six-figure paycheck, I have no time to take luxury vacations or see my family. How can this be the American dream? (I've written a little about this in my old blog, too)

I really identify with his character. He wants to live without society’s constraints and expectations. There is a scene in the movie after his college graduation when his parents announce their graduation gift to him, a new car. He quickly tells them he doesn’t need a new car. He has one that works just fine. He doesn’t want any more things, any more stuff; his life is so countercultural in that way. I constantly struggle with that. I don’t want any more stuff either. Well, let me rephrase that, I don’t need anymore stuff, yet I find myself throwing it in the shopping cart or ravaging through the new anthropologie catalogue like it had the cure for cancer in its pages. It’s no easy task to ditch the American dream.

I find so much joy from being out in the world and experiencing new things. Part of me is so inspired by his story, almost enough so to pick up and go, but the other part of me takes so much joy in a small town life, comfortable and familiar. What does one do with that? How do you satisfy the desire for adventure and experience and the desire for comfort and safety?

I apologize for the random collage of thoughts; I’m too lazy to string them all together at the moment.

I do recommend to you all…
-watch Into the Wild if you haven’t seen it yet
-go ahead and buy the soundtrack, it’s amazing