The Thin Line Between Recklessness and Embracing Life

Song of the Moment: Remember to Breathe by Dashboard Confessional

Yesterday, I was made to sit through over two hours of grueling film, as I watched the highly acclaimed movie “Into the Wild” --- written and directed by Sean Penn. The motion picture garnered two Oscar nominations, Best Achievement in Editing and Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, among other notable nominations and distinctions across award-giving bodies in the international film industry. I loosely categorize it as an indie film, but that will depend on your judgment. The story goes this way:

Alex, a young man fresh from Emory College, decides to just leave the material society behind to go on a journey into Alaska's wilderness. He meets many curious characters along the way, and somehow, he manages to leave an indelible mark on each one in the same manner that he learns from each one. He made his own rules, followed where the wind would take him, and just stripped down his lifestyle to the very basics.

Obviously, it would have been a different story all together if a girl played the lead. I can’t even begin to imagine doing what he did. There were points during the movie that made me shake my head and say, “That’s just reckless.” But the very core of the story lies in the adventurous, free spirited footsteps of someone on a quest towards a spiritual revolution, abandoning all the dangerous pretenses of the world and embracing the basic truth of being.

For me, the question I'd like to ask here is, “How can we differentiate a reckless decision from an act of embracing life?” We live in a society that has long perfected traditions, written laws, infrastructures and technology that all exist to help us go through life with a comforting sense of order and safety. We say to ourselves, “Things will go as smooth as I intended, as long as I have X.” X could stand for a degree in college, work experience and wisdom that comes with age. X could stand for money, power and influence. X could stand for a new law, a new government system and political reforms. X could stand for the newest laptop model, a state-of-the-art PDA and the new hybrid vehicle. But admittedly, X is a by-product of the unceasing evolution of Man and consequently, his changing needs. Perhaps in his earliest experiences, there were no X's to begin with. And yet he seemed to have lived as he felt he should and was satisfied. That was sufficient.

So what is reckless then? And what do we mean when we say we should truly embrace life? Try categorizing each one below, and find out what forces are ultimately controlling (or conflicting in) your life.

1. Committing to a pure love with no regard for financial stability, age qualification, parental consent and social divide

2. Choosing a college degree or a job that you love but will guarantee a lifelong struggle for survival

3. Not finishing your education to pursue your dreams

4. Fighting for a cause, even if it means endangering your own family's welfare

5. Dying for a country based on principles alone

6. Rallying behind truth and justice, even if the rest of the world would rather remain with the convenient status quo

7. Choosing the road less traveled that is against the norms driven by your gender, race, religion, social class, etc.

We have a personal choice to make every day... of either being secured by society's progressive values system or being empowered by a strong inner voice. There aren't necessarily any correct answers, nor are there single answers to every question we ask. All we have are differing perspectives in pursuit of different aspirations, within an entire lifetime of balancing acts.

MOTION: This house believes we should stop singing "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse.

Song of the Moment: Rehab by Amy Winehouse.

"They tried to make me go to rehab. I said no, no, no."

And in this debate, I would so eagerly volunteer to be the government prime minister, as long as I use the program cited on Glenn Beck's article entitled, "America Needs a 12-step Program." The great thing about this article is that we can apply it to our own country, and well, even our own personal progress and failure.

Anyway, I lifted the article from this link (jumps to CNN.com). Read on and take a moment to reflect about your own life.

Glenn Beck: America needs a 12-step program
Editor's note: "Glenn Beck" is on Headline News nightly at 7 and 9 ET.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- My name is Glenn Beck, and I am a recovering alcoholic.
It took me a lot of years and a lot of pain to be able to say those words and really believe them. Along the way, I was arrogant, greedy and self-destructive.

But the worst part was that I didn't see any of it.

Even at the lowest, darkest points of my life, I still thought of myself as that successful guy who everyone loved. I was the life of the party, the guy who could do no wrong -- the guy who everyone else only wished they could be. At least that's what I thought.

Now I know better. People weren't looking at me with envy; they were looking at me with disgust as they watched me throw away everything I had worked so hard for.

I think America can relate.

Through hard work and unwavering principles, America took itself from a far-fetched idea to the greatest, most compassionate, most free country the world has ever known. But as our success has grown, so has our arrogance.

We've compromised our values, sold out our principles and used our freedoms to justify giving more power to the government. In the first century of America's life, its government was afraid of its citizens. Now, it's the other way around.

Maybe America should consider starting on the same kind of 12-step program that's helped millions of other addicts who couldn't see that they were slowly killing themselves. Here's my version of it, condensed to six steps since I know that Americans are way too lazy to stick around for all 12.

Step One: Admit we are not powerless.
Take a look at our Constitution. Not just a transcript; find an actual picture of it. The first three words, "We the People," are at least four times larger than the others. Do you think that was an accident? Of course not. Our framers chose those words, and made them that size, because they knew they were the answer to any problem we would ever face.

Step Two: Believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.
I think this one pretty much speaks for itself.

Step Three: Decide to take our power back.
A recent polls says 81 percent of Americans now say that our country is on the wrong track. If you're one of those people, who do you blame? The Bush administration? Congress? The media?
Here's a crazy idea: How about blaming ourselves?

If you don't like the fact that your city has led the country in poverty and homelessness for the last 10 years, then ELECT SOMEONE NEW. Stop voting for the same people from the same party every year.

Our power hasn't gone away (see Step One), it's just been masked by politicians who are tearing us apart for their own gain. We need to reclaim that power, and then we need to use it.

Step Four: Make a complete and fearless moral inventory.
Alcoholics aren't exactly big fans of introspection and self-examination, but this is one of the most important steps to recovery.

What are America's faults? What are our assets? By taking stock of both, we can start to work on maximizing our strengths and eliminating our weaknesses. It sounds simple, but when's the last time you really thought about what America does right? That brings me to Step Five.

Step Five: Admit our wrongs, and our rights.
We're constantly reminded about America's faults and flaws, but what about our achievements?
If you want to teach our kids about Vietnam, that's fine, but you better also teach them about World War II. And if you want to talk about our wars, you better also talk about our welfare. America is one of the most charitable countries in the history of the world, yet our mistakes are always glorified far more than our generosity. That needs to be reversed.

Step Six: Be ready to remove our defects.
Just like an alcoholic, we simply cannot go from sleeping on the street to perfection overnight. This is a big ship, and it takes a long time to turn it around.

But we have to start somewhere, and the best place is with the defects that almost all of us agree on. For example, does anyone really believe that being addicted to Saudi Arabia's oil is a good idea? What about China owning billions of our debt? Speaking of debt, what about the fact that we've saddled our children with $53 trillion in future Social Security and Medicare obligations?

But before we can address any problems, we have to first admit we have them. Many of us are in denial about just how divided we've become. We think that it's just the election or the war that's tearing us apart, but the truth is, it's much larger than that. We're every bit as arrogant, greedy and self-destructive as I was when I hit bottom.

Fortunately, it's not hopeless. It never is. If a program can work on a rodeo clown like me, it can definitely work for a country as great as ours. But until we're able to stand up and say, "Hello, my name is America and I have a problem," we'll never even have a chance.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

PS: I apologize to those people who really thought this entry was about Amy Winehouse. =)

The Quest to Be Interesting

Song of the Moment: Sparkle Me by The Buffseeds

She's an introvert, perennial home buddy, nicey-nice, bring-home-to-your-mama girly girl. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Most days, she'd rather stay home, fix herself a gourmet sandwich and read a good book or watch DVDs. She does a lot of lurking around the Internet from the comfort of her room - drooling over her future Macbook, for instance, or browsing through people's photos on social networks. She is a lover of the peace and the quiet. So, if you'd make her choose, she'd immediately prefer coffee/wine conversations over a club crawl. She doesn't find those fitness dance classes as effective and rewarding as working out/running alone. She feels uncomfortable doing her shopping with another person because she doesn't want anyone slowing her down or hearing someone else's opinion on her fashion sense. However, she still believes she's living a good lie.. errr, life. She absolutely loves to travel, preferably on her own and with a sizeable pocket money. She truly enjoys long drives when she's on the wheel; it's absurdly therapeutic for her. She gets all giddy when she just discovered a new restaurant/movie/music artist or she's about to try out a new cultural/historical activity. And she makes time to hang out and go a bit crazy with the girlfriends, even though she's already in a really serious relationship. Bottomline, I'd like to think that, in spite of her being perceived by the public as a quiet good girl, she still comes out pretty interesting over all.

And then someone says, "The Good Girls don't make the headlines." I thought about that and I tried recalling if there are honest-to-goodness nice girls out there who really got everyone's attention. So it hit me, the good girls who reach the headlines are either dead or are suddenly not-so-nice-after-all (read: as in the selling genius of Girls Gone Wild). Not fair. Why can't good girls be interesting too?

Or perhaps, the nice girl just doesn't know how to sell herself, in fear of rudely stealing the spotlight from someone else. "What's up with you, nice girl? Who else can give you a spotlight except yourself?" I guess it really has something to do with how much she puts out there in order to be noticed... and eventually, remembered. (aside: This sounds like high school all over again. Oh well!)

She has this dilemma about group conversations; she's not a "butt in" person. If you see her with a group, she's probably the token quiet person in the whole table. She has all these ideas in her pretty 'lil head, what with the myriad of blogs and websites she visits. But she just cannot seem to find the rhythm in a group conversation --- that is, knowing when she can make the perfect punchline. I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that in the family dinner table, she was taught NOT to interrupt... so she'd wait.. and wait.. and wait... until the perfect timing has gone by. There's nothing really wrong with respecting someone else's speaking time, but I wish she knew how to speak more and to stop over-listening. Gasp! There's such a thing as excessive listening!
Ok, so I'm the nice girl who wants to be interesting, but still comes out pretty boring as I'm the quiet one in a group because I persistently respect other people's space. With that said, I'd like to officially embark on a Quest to Be Interesting here. So....

I resolve to say anything and everything I feel like saying, and catch that perfect timing.

I resolve to just jump, and let the net appear.

I resolve to read and read, and share and share.

I resolve to imagine things in my head and act them out like I'm in a play.

I resolve to be interesting.

Good girls can make the headlines too. Just you wait. But, someday I'm just going to look back at this post and say to myself, "Man, was that really necessary?"