“And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness…. And this is the most vexing of all, HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.”—Christopher McCandless, from Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild

Unquestionably Christopher McCandless was of us, a Brethren of the Omphalos Cafe. A Shaman-Type.

Sadly though, tragically in many cases, we Shaman-Types are thrust into conventional schooling at the youngest of ages. And when we finally balk and make the break towards the end of our teens there is nowhere to turn, no guides or guilds to follow or join, no mentors to point us in the right direction. Today the Shaman-Type tradition has been utterly extirpated, so a young man born to the calling as Christopher McCandless undoubtedly was frequently ends up either dropping out or disappearing altogether in order to pursue his own self-directed course of Shaman-Type study.

Alone.

And the commentariat, the muggles who look on and opine from the outside, only see a self-absorbed, confused and discontented adolescent. From their comfortably conforming vantage points they shake their collective heads and search for reasons why he went astray, why he fell off the rails of conventionality.

They cannot see that he is not just failing or dropping out due to some unsuspected flaw in his makeup. They cannot possibly fathom—for it is in the nature of muggles to misunderstand these things of which I speak—that in actuality he is moving TOWARDS something. And that thing he is striving  towards is a deeper, fuller, more direct experience of Life.

What I’m talking about here is the archetypal hero’s journey of which Joseph Campbell wrote in his The Hero With a Thousand Faces. It is the death of a young person raised into our middle class conventional world and resurrection of a genuine Shaman-Type into a new relationship with Life.

Sadly, even tragically as I’ve said, unguided, most young prospective ST’s today don’t make it. The vast majority crash and burn, take to alcohol or drugs, end their own lives, or like Christopher McCandless succumb to the extreme challenges and tests they’ve willfully undertaken in an untutored effort to give birth to their true selves.

That’s to say, their deaths are not poetic or metaphorical but tragically real.

Anyway, having finished reading Krakauer’s Into The Wild I found an honoured place on my shelves for it.

Welcome to the Omphalos Cafe, Christopher McCandless…

May you rest in blessed peace….