1 post tagged “christopher mccandless”
I feel remiss about not keeping up this blog and plan to do better by it in the future. Each time I visit vox I am either guided to, or stumble upon, someone whose posts really make me smile, i.e. art and tea's featured profile, or make me think, i.e. sujatin's blog on free burma! int. blogger's day post about tomorrow being a day for bloggers to help remind everyone the atrocities going on there - you can find out more at: http://www2.free-burma.org/index.php
Today my guy and I went to see Sean Penn's new movie "Into the Wild," the movie based on the book by Jon Krakauer on the tragic ending life of Christopher McCandless, a very bright and charismatic young man, who upon graduating from college, donates his lifesavings to Oxfam and heads out on a two year odyessy that ends in his death in the Alaskan wilderness.
It's a beautiful, touching movie. I feel Penn handled the material with grace and dignity. Particularly sad to me was not only that Chris dies (I believe I'd seen a 60 Minutes profile on the story some years ago) but the flashbacks of his growing up with parents who frequently and savagely fought, but hung in there together tooth and nail, obsessed with status and the things money can buy. I have some familiarity with that scenario. Oh the amazing and varied ways a couple can be mean to each other, and how little their children's real happiness seems to interfere with their need to rip each other apart! How especially tragic and ironic it is when they have health and everything money can buy and yet they can't see the forest for the trees to happiness. And of course they aren't acting out of a vaccume. They too learned that behavior from someone else, perhaps their parents, and so it goes on and on until someone decides to choose differently, to stop the madness. So Chris goes out into the wild to get away - and has amazing and wonderous adventures - but ultimately finds that he is lonely and ready to return to society, only to find it impossible.
Simply, ordinary kindness is so underrated as a mode of behavior in our every day society these days, let alone romantic relationships. Perhaps most especially in the United States. We are so quick to judge, to blame, to point the finger. I am so grateful to the buddhist teachings I've read that stress kindness both to ourselves and to others as a better attitude to adopt. Certainly I fall short on my kindness goals too many times to count or mention, but I feel better as a person having kindness now firmly as a goal.
