“For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many grief’s” (1Timothy 6:10). It is the idea that today’s world is so consumed by money that I feel that a character like McCandless very well could exist. It is for the same reasons that McCandless lived his life that I feel this way. Things like poverty, world hunger, and peoples absorption in the idea of money and material things, is what drives people to live lives like McCandless secluded from the world in constant states of isolation in search of answers to life’s most difficult question. Can money truly buy happiness?
Especially attending Georgia State University right in the heart of Atlanta one of our country’s most popular and biggest cities, we are surrounded by poverty everyday. The homeless people seem to flood our city streets in the same way students and the men and women of corporate America commuting to work and school do. They are wandering around trying to find places to get warm, change to spare, and food to eat. You have to wonder why it is that we cannot provide shelter and jobs for these people when five escalades on 22 inch rims just passed right by then music blaring windows tinted, completely obliged to their surroundings and the suffering that exists just a few feet away. To have to live this way with no help from those around you, why wouldn’t you be pressured to live a life like Alex McCandless? Why wouldn’t you want to run away from the cold hearted realities of the world?
And right behind the walls of that two story 6 bedroom red brick house lives a family that from the outside can easily be perceived as living the American Dream. Daddy makes six figures, mom stays at home with the kids, their oldest child is the captain of three athletic teams and on the Honor roll. But daddy’s never home because he has to support a family and stay at home mom, mom is all alone struggling to raise 5 kids on her own, and the fathers gambling problem is slowly dragging the family into debt, but they wear they’re smiles of deception well. See we’re often led to believe go to school, work hard, and be rewarded with a high paying job and live the good life. But we often are misguided, not taught about the true struggles and pressures of adulthood. They skip over money management, how to deal with adultery, raising teenage kids, paying bills on time. Life is hard no one teaches you how to deal with emotional aspects of it, how to react when thrown face to face into the battle ring with reality.
Nowadays to even get a minimum wage job without a high school diploma is difficult. Gas is sky high so you can barely get to work, the price of buying homes is constantly increasing, and foreclosures happen on a daily basis. We are often forced into going to college into working that 9 to 5, because as far as we know unless you can act or sing there is just no place for you in this world. But where do we place the people who although equipped with the mental tools to achieve the degree and job, just don’t want to live that life. Who like McCandless can’t bear to sit around and watch people around him suffer and want to get away? I don’t think at any point in time will we not be able to live lives like McCandless because of economic reasons. It is economic reasons that in my perspective are the exact reason people are driven to live that life. Hitch hiking from place to place roaming the backwoods of Wyoming, and mountains of Alaska. If for any reason that lifestyle couldn’t exist in today’s world it would not because of economical reasons but because of the people we are forced to live with, the amount of killers, pedophiles, and rapists seem to be steadily increasing with the years. McCandless lived a life of peace he did what made him happy and didn’t feel pressured to please his parents and take his Emory degree and pursue a career as a doctor. He roamed the world documented his travels and did what he loved everyday. His story is proof money cant buy happiness.
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1 comment:
i really enjoyed reading your blog entry. You made very valid points that i sometimes over look as far as the homeless ppl that flood downtown atlanta. I agreed with many points that you made and i also feel the same way when it came down to some of the stuff you said. GReat blog it realy caught my attention. :)
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