into the wild

Since I last wrote, I went through training at the neurosurgery and anesthesiology departments, and finally our first term has ended.  As soon as I came back home a couple of hours ago, I started reading Into the Wild.  I've only read 1/3 of it yet, but I'm slowly beginning to understand this Christopher McCandless -- a kid in his early twenties who ended up dying in the wilderness of Alaska in 1992 after hitchhiking for two years.  In one of the letters he wrote to people he met on the road, he talks a great deal about the importance of getting out of your comfort zone.  I've heard a lot of people talk about this, and it's a piece of advice that makes me wonder a bit if I'm nearing the end of my twenties missing out on important experiences I could've had had I chosen different ways.

I say this because I've never really tried to get out of my comfort zone in the sense McCandless did.  Some people tell me it was very brave of me to decide to switch to medicine after majoring in law, probably because I had to endure some sense of insecurity until I got a place in med school, but it wasn't a crazy plan, like ditching all my possessions and travelling to "see the world" and meet random people on the way.  I've always planned my future carefully for a stable job, a stable life, and I value stable human relationships.  And actually, I don't necessarily think it's a way of life to be criticized the way McCandless probably did:

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to life of security... ...nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. ...The joy of life come from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

Personally, I think it's perfectly possible to be happy with a "life of security" with no "adventures" or "new experiences" as long as you have good eyes to notice the little reasons to be happy in your sedentary repetitive existence.  But maybe it's a totally different type of happiness that you find in the wild -- "the great triumphant joy" to be alive -- and I can only imagine because I've never hitchhiked my way to Alaska, and I probably never will; that is not my dream.

Perhaps I will try to "get out of my comfort zone" in some other way at some point in my life once I start working as a doctor and gain financial freedom.  I can almost hear McCandless point out that I have totally missed the point here, but I have no courage to abandon everything and take the risk of dying alone, cold and hungry.  I cannot help but wonder if McCandless still believed in his values and the reckless choices he had made when he realized he was going to die.

Still, any life is transient, a passing phenomenon after all, and the security I value is only a borrowed hut I will have to let go anyway.  In that sense, there may be nothing to lose at any point in life.

Regarding human relationships, I've learned to value ones that don't necessarily last; it's not only those "stable relationships" I mentioned earlier that shape my life and who I am.  Sometimes, a one time encounter can make a mark on someone's life; a single memory can make someone feel glad to be alive.  But I have always valued human relationship, and there is one passage Chris wrote that has kind of opened my eyes, of course not in the same way as his "raw transcendent experiences" had opened his own eyes, but I think it's worth quoting:

You are wrong if you think Joy emanate only or principally from human relationships.  God has placed it all around us.  It is in everything and anything we might experience. ...My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life.