Into The Wild or thoughts on relationships.

Today I watched "Into The Wild", Sean Penn's 2007 film, an adaption of Jon Krakeur's book of the same name, about a twenty something guy, Christopher McCandless, who, after graduating from a good University, gives away all his savings to charity, leaves all his possessions apart from a few things he carries on his back, and leaves his friends and family to head out across America, with the ultimate aim of hitting Alaska and living in the wild, alone and off the land. Resisting a middle class life of 9 to 5 jobs, obligation, materialism and pressure, he heads off, burning his money and leaving his family behind, hoping to "discover" himself and live an authentic existence, just him and nature and nothing else. It's a beautifl film, with gorgeous shots of America; the open road, the wilds, the ocean, the city. (And, I'm not going to lie, Emile Hersch as Christopher is pretty damn beautiful too!). But as i sat watching it with my friends, all of us in our last year of Uni, all of us mapping out a life in the Big Bad World of jobs and money and morgages and credit crunches and cars and houses, what struck me was the attractiveness of heading off, alone, in to the world, rejecting money and possessions and the hold they have over us and pursuing something bigger; spirituality, love, redemption adn an awareness of SOmething Bigger than us...a realisation I think Christopher reaches in the film. I am a Kerouac girl, I love the idea of leaving all this stuff behind, selling my possessions and getting out. I love Kerouac's "Big Sur" where he goes to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and tries to live alone, working out who he is away from alcohol, girls and the city. And I lovve Bon Iver's album, "For Emma, Forever Ago" for the same reason...the idea of getting away from everyone, stripping it all away and seeing what is left. And I can see a beauty, a spirituality in this...in rejecting my endless pursuit of things; clothes and hairstyles and lifestyles and money and coolness, in getting away from it and finding myself and God away from it all.
But, Christopher is also running away from obligation to people; from relationships and caring and people being around him. Messed up by his parents' relationship, he leaves and cuts them off completely, not getting in contact with them or his sister, just withdrawing completely. And he tells Ron, an old man he meets and becomes family to, that the core of human beings is experience- not shared experience....but the things we see and do and taste and feel. And this week, where I have seen and felt a little of how humans can hurt each other, this view is attractive to me. Watching the film, I thought about getting out; about travelling somewhere by myself and writing and reading and walking and remembering who I am and finding God again, in a quiet and separate place. Because, sometimes, I get tired of this community thing, sometimes I get hurt by what people say and loving people like Jesus loved us isn't always easy and there's not always a return on it. And I would like to withdraw.
But, the beautiful thing about this film is that it exposes the lie of the running away from the American Dream. Underneath the romanticism of living alone and finding yourself and being close to the nature, is the wish to retreat from people- soemtimes, the risk of loneliness seems better than being close to people, than loving people- becasue it can really hurt sometimes. But what Christpher finds on the way to Alaska, family and community and acceptance, in the shape of a hippy couple and a crazy farmer (Vince Vaughn, would you belive it?) and a lonely old man, THAT is what we are called to and there is massive beauty in that, despite its difficulty and vulnerability. And right at the end, tucked away in an old bus in the wilds of Alaska, having run away from all the people that tried to love him, Christopher rethinks his definition of what humanity is, scrawling "happiness is only real when shared" in the margins of a book. And here, in my little house in Leamington, I think I'm gonna stick with it and remember that there is soemthing beautiful in sharing my life with people, jsut like Jesus told us to.