Today’s Mantra: I will honour my one wild and precious life
So I just finished the book Wild by Cheryl Strayed.
I closed it and as I did I felt a wave of disappointment. As always when something is hyped up you believe it will be more. I had heard that I would be bawling, it was that raw emotionally.
So when there was no “big” scene or plot peak I felt a bit cheated.
But thinking over the prose I realise that it sparked a kind of electricity. Reading the book I was hiking the trail with Cheryl. I breathed in the clean air and surveyed the mountains, lakes and hills she describes so poetically.
She is literally hiking away from the series of life events, that she describes so candidly, and at the same time unashamedly accepting them.
The death of her Mum.
Her divorce.
A drug-fuelled, ill-fated romance.
The college degree she dropped.
This book reminds me of Eat, Pray, Love. I didn’t love it, but then I never had the kind of battered, lost life that the author did and that sooo many people identified with. To them, Eat, Pray, Love is hope.
I believe this book is the same. She is lost and she is found. It’s her journey and it could be yours.
This could be your hope.
Lost or not, I was entertained the whole time and I got a tingly feeling of what it’s like to be alive, really alive.
In my own life, I got that feeling vividly and momentously when we were on safari. I remember thinking to myself as we sat inches away from leopards, lions and the bounty of African wild life, “This is living, this is what life is meant to feel like.”
I got it again on a half-day hike in Botswana and on a smaller scale Kayaking in Broome recently.
For me life hits me in the face when there is a potent combination of stunning nature-scapes and maybe the slightest element of danger.
What makes you feel alive?
