A few years ago, I watched the movie “Into the Wild”  and it totally blew me away.  Some people hated it and some people think Chris McCandless was an idiot.  I’d like to think he was young and a bit foolish but was someone who had a very unique outlook on life.  The movie, in some ways, changed my life.  It was more or less the reason I did the Fifty for Fifty list last year.

I spent a lot of years trying to fit in to what convention said was how you were “supposed” to be.  Grow up, go to college, get a good job, work hard, get married, have kids, retire, and then live happily ever after.  Some of those things worked for me and some didn’t.  And when those things didn’t work, I felt like the odd man out.  Then I withdrew to avoid having to explain WHY I wasn’t fitting in and that was my “safe place”.

Along the way, I started to travel “alone” and had some adventures.  It made the “normal people” question why I went “alone” and wonder if I wasn’t lonely.  Um, no, not until they made a big deal out of it.  But now that I am on the other side of 50, I realize that some of my friends who chose the conventional path are envious of the adventurous side they didn’t get to explore.  While they were busy having kids and trying to get ahead in the corporate world, I was doing other stuff.

Somehow, I left some of that security and convention behind and I don’t miss it.  Well, much.  I gave up on the “getting ahead” thing because it didn’t suit me to be a manager.  Working 50 or 60 hours a week is not for me.

What Into The Wild meant to me was…..sometimes you have to say “Eff it” and do whatever you want.  Don’t bow down to what “society” says you “should do”.  Be a little unconventional.  Have an adventure.  Live life.  Color outside the lines.

It will do your soul a lot of good.