Ode to McCandless

I want to die as Christopher McCandless did. Not alone, but happy. I want to follow my

dreams, forget about the world, and do what I want, but I don’t want to do it alone. Before McCandless died, he scrawled a realization into one of his books, “And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that unshared happiness is not happiness,” (Krakauer 189). My parents raised me in a happy environment. Despite the stress near the end of their relationship, they were happy together for years, and they were happy to be raising my brother and me. As I grow, I am determined to cultivate that same happiness, with hopes that someday I will be able to share that happiness to the people I care about. However, I will not merely “merge” to fit the lives of others as McCandless describes. One can share happiness, but if one has to bend and change to fit the mold of another person, then that person is not the one that will share your happiness. I will go my own way, meet others along the way, but until I find the thing I love most, I will not settle for less. I’m determined to live my dreams. I don't necessarily wish to live through McCandless and live alone in a bus in the Alaska brush, but instead I hope to find something of what he was looking for. I hope to set my own path, and while I may wander along the way, I will not turn around.