~ Into The Wild ~

~ Into The Wild ~

“The choice between a conventional life and an unconventional life was one we all faced at some point. The period of your life where this happened was mostly in the post-education years. The first part of your life, you don’t have any real agency over – you simply follow the law and go to an institutional education facility for the best part of two decades. But when that was finished you suddenly were given an opportunity to walk whatever path you wanted to. Although there are many vehicles, there are essentially only two roads: A) You start a career and follow a linear and safe path of mortgage, kids and retirement, or B) you go down the rabbit hole and try something different. For me, the only desire I had was to travel and so, two months after my graduation, I caught a one-way flight to South America to begin my journey into wonderland. Over the next few years I continued walking down that path. The way took me to peaks of mountains, to seedy hotel rooms, to erupting volcanoes, to almost dying stranded with a friend in the woods of winter.

While it was thrilling and invigorating, I would be lying if I said at sometimes I wasn’t anxious or worried. Often I reflected on everyone else back home busying away, building their nests and bank accounts while I basically had nothing but a backpack and a worn-out passport. At my lowest point I was on the other side of the world with $50 to my name, sleeping in an airport lounge with no plane to catch. Suddenly I began to question myself; suddenly the homeless people on the sidewalks became society’s warning about where I could end up should I drift too far from the road of normality. Where was I going? What was I doing? Was it all really worth it? Yes, I won’t lie. I won’t lie and say sometimes I wasn’t apprehensive, or concerned, or that I didn’t think about turning around back onto the safe path, but it only took the thought of me slowly dying inside in a life I hated over many years to pick up that backpack and continue walking wide-eyed into the wilderness of the unknown.”

(taken from my book ‘The Thoughts From The Wild’ available here)