Into the Wild: "Happiness is only real when shared" ... Is it really?

A few days ago some friends and I walked through the mountains that are home to the largest waterfall of Minas Gerais when one of them asked me: Do you really believe that "Happiness is only real when shared?". Of course, I said without thinking twice ... For then I realize that good ... was wrong.

The scenario in which we seemed to be the proof of that sentence. We were on a trail walking along a river passing by stones that seemed to have been carved by giants. Nature was lush and there in front of one watercourses down nearly 300 meters danced turning into a mist. I was happy to be there and even more so to have the company of good friends. Happiness was real and shared!

The phrase in question is the biggest lesson of those who read the book or watching the movie "Into the Wild." If you do not know go to the nearest video store (it still exist?) Or look on netflix or even take the book to read before you continue reading this text.

The spoiler warning was given!

Not always like those catchphrases that we always see out there circulating in social media. The weight of your lessons can transform lives, but they always need a context. Without a story they become banal cliches. Gain tanned but not understanding.

Since I absorbed this phrase after reading the exciting story of Christopher McCandless life she has been a north in my life, it brings purpose to this blog and illustrates the effect of many meetings in my vagaMundagem. I have no doubt that sharing laughs and experiences brings me a very good feeling, makes me happy. But if you change the outlook, some experiments show you that "happiness is NOT only real when shared."

Because it makes sense in the context of "Wild Nature"?

The history of the book and the film is real and happened to the young American Christopher McCandless when he got fed up with the society around them, their expectations and demands. He realized he was not living an honest life with your inner feelings and so, like many of us, he lived for and others. He was in the trap of living life that society expects from us. Newly graduated realized that following that path was like putting on a mask to please parents, girlfriend, friends. Professional success, academic achievements, materials and relationships which would cost?

He decided to drop everything he did for the company and began to follow their own and extreme way towards abandoned all around, burned the dollars that had left the car given by the father and was traveling in the simplest way. For a few years he traveled picking up hitchhikers by the US, Mexico, Canada to get to Alaska and there isolate completely from everything and everyone. He arrived in late summer when the rivers were low and survived the freezing winter and spring when I was ready to leave the place we saw cornered by voluminous rivers formed by the melting snows.

McCandless ended up eating a poisonous plant and before he died alone and isolated in his journal in bold letters the famous phrase: "Happiness is only real when shared." The lesson was clear: give up entirely of society escape from their addictions and their follies, cut all sorts of relationships with other people was also crazy. The way the story is told is even clearer to abandon completely their parents and those who cared for him at home, more to think different, was a selfish act.

It was there that happiness was.

Mccandles thought he was fleeing from the capitalist ills, hypocrisy and social falsehoods, but he failed to realize that no good physically get away from all these problems if they were still in his mind the following wherever he went. Still McCandless met on his travels happiness in encounters with strangers, friendships made on the road, sharing laughs and also suffering. That was really happiness? Yes, it was for that moment, but there she was ephemeral. Perhaps the greatest happiness McCnadles found was when he desapegou of all that the Moldavian home and was free to approach your true self. A pity I missed the courage to share with those who loved their findings. So what seems to be his biggest regret becomes the biggest lesson from its history.

I believe all that is ephemeral, which has a shelf life does not bring true happiness. Material goods such as cars, houses, planes, jewelry are all at the mercy of time. Sooner or later you lose them and the feeling of inner emptiness becomes unbearable. The supposed "happiness" generated by power and professional success is the same order. When we know a person who has everything that we think brings happiness we only see the reflection. How many times in my travels I met people who seemed to have everything to be happy: money, power, family, fame, friends, health, religion and even "God" but further conversation the person ends up revealing the lack of some inexplicable thing.

What really matters?

Who am I to define happiness and judge when it is real. That's what we all seek, and while I agree that we find happiness in the meetings and the sharing of experiences I know that it is only able to fill the emptiness when we seek within us even deeper in the knowledge of the true self and away that our image to build and is reflected in the mirror and in the eyes of the people around us.

So happiness can be even more real, even when not shared. It happens within us and does not depend on masks and the perspective of the beholder us. Traveling can be the best tool for you to follow this path because you have the chance to leave behind all that you shape and makes sense at home, but does not make much sense within yourself.

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Read also my other stories...

 What is couchsurfing, as it was my first experience

 My trip From USA to Chile flying a single-engine