Bobby Burgess linked to a captivating article on Chris McCandless's demise. I printed the article and read it outside over lunch, and I'll probably give it to someone at random, maybe to a homeless person. The homeless in San Francisco are a very literary bunch.

Reading through the article, I kept locating where I was at the various times during McCandless's wanderings, tracing the path of his last year of life using the path of my life as a reference point, as if they were synchronous. Did my flight to Japan in June of 1992 fly over Alaska? That time period was one of upheaval and promise for me. I was in Japan when he died. I returned suddenly to the U.S. a month later and entered a most self-destructive period of my life. I applied to law school.

Why else was that article so captivating? Maybe because he went into the store and bought what I've only window shopped for. Maybe because I know as he approached death, he didn't regret anything. It probably flashed through his mind how his life could have been, taking the comfortable path and life, doing what his upper-middle class upbringing expected of him. No way.

And the strangest part of all is that reading article, I didn't feel any regret about my life, even not having done what he did. Even ending up dead, I would have preferred to be brave enough to keep and follow my passions. He having done it, made me feel OK for not having done it. As long as someone did it. Weird, huh?

Being brave enough to keep and follow passions doesn't mean doing what he did. It's different for everyone. It could mean being in an indie band that doesn't make it big, but manages just enough of a following to plug away on the road for years and years. For me, being brave enough to keep and follow my passions would probably have entailed being committed and bounced in and out of mental institutions. I would have had no regrets if I had been honest with myself and ended up like that. But no, my passions are only skin deep, and the proof of that is on my skin. I don't know what that's supposed to mean, I just wanted to end this sounding melodramatic.