Friday, May 02, 2008
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Mettle
Last week I watched a movie called Into The Wild, a film adapation of a book about Christopher McCandless.
McCandless gave away nearly everything he owned shortly after graduating from college and began wandering the US, just for the experience of living a selfless life without attachments. His ultimate goal was to journey into the Alaskan wilderness to live in complete solitude, to truly discover himself. He eventually made it there, but was woefully unprepared, and discovered that his true self was, apparently, a 67-pound emaciated corpse in a sleeping bag. :(
I thought it was a great movie... his journey was fascinating, and if the portrayal of him was accurate, he truly was an essentially good person.
But that is not my point.
If you read the Wikipedia entries I linked to up there, you'll see that there is a general consensus that, in addition to being a wonderful human being, McCandless was a colossal idiot for going into the Alaskan wilderness unprepared. I'm sort of in agreement with that, assuming the information is correct. But colossal idiot or not, there's no denying that Christopher McCandless tested his own mettle before he checked out.
I'll be 41 years old this year. I served in the military for six years. I've seen more of the world than the average person, I suppose. I've been in a lot of really stressful situations and I've come out OK time and time again. But I don't think my mettle has ever been truly tested.
I don't even know what mettle means.
If you put me on the witness stand, held up a Sean doll, and asked me to point at the mettle, I'd look away and squirm. If you threatened me with contempt, I'd point at the doll somewhere roughly halfway between my brain and my balls, which I guess puts it in or near my heart, and the poetic implications of that are so galactically corny that I don't even want to think about it.
But I can't help thinking about it. By the numbers, I'm in the third decade of my adult life, but I've never really felt like what I thought being an adult would feel like. I'm certain that's got to be a very subjective feeling, but I know I'm not feeling it. And I know I'm not a "child at heart" kind of person. I feel a strange incompleteness that I don't think I should be feeling at my age, and I think that feeling is due to a surplus of untested mettle.
I guess this is the onset of my midlife crisis. As a younger man, I would joke about things like this, but now that I'm here, it's not so funny. I really feel like I need to do something about this, but I haven't the slightest idea what that should be.
My inner colossal idiot is telling me that it should involve real, physical, consequential danger, and in the absence of any suggestions, I'm inclined to agree with him.
Got any suggestions?
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Comments (30)
I wrestle with this too. I have a desire to fulfill my purpose in life, and figure that the test of my mettle is whether or not I succeed (or try as hard as I can).
Mettle is an illusion. Testing an illusion is why the guy died in Alaska.
@HomerTheBrave - well, give me another word then. What I know for certain is that I constantly feel as though, on some unknown scale, I'm a few units short of some unknown something in my life. I'm not really unhappy about anything, I've got most of what I want or need materially. I've done my turn with religion and have made my peace with my decisions there. So what could it be?
What I'm saying, I guess, could be put another way:
Plan something and do it.
Start by driving to the pacific northwest.
@HomerTheBrave - sure, it's on the way to Alaska!
Whatever you do, be prepared.
@craftygirl - i think the solution to my problem will need to transcend mere transportation.
@styxx374 - absolutely. When I talk about danger, I'm not giving in completely to my inner colossal idiot. I'm referring to general risk, and not the type of danger that can be avoided by knowing WTF you're doing.
@sean - well yes but .... WHERE you take the road trip and why can make the road trip more than "just" transportation
@craftygirl - ok, let me rephrase: been there, done that :)
@sean - Ahh, well there you go then
What about something like this?
The portrayal of Alexander Supertramp in the book wasn't accurate, and the movie deviated even farther from the facts. Two of the facts he might have learned had he asked a local resident or acquired a map was that he was half a mile from an overhead cable car that crossed the river he believed had him trapped there, and he was an easy days walk from a Forest Service cabin stocked with food and fuel.
How you feel about this issue matters more than what anyone else can tell you. I know what my "mettle" is and my mettle is in fine fettle, thank you very much. I know that I got here by a rough road that few people would want to take, but I would not want to have missed.
I will not wish you good luck, because if luck exists at all it is out of our hands, in the power of some capricious Fate. I wish you success and satisfaction. For that, prepare yourself, inform yourself and trust your instincts.
@SuSu - thanks :) I realize that, like the sense of adulthood I tried to describe, the measure of one's mettle is subjective. I guess I'm just fishing for some examples of how others may have dealt with the sort of feelings I'm having, if they've had them.
@craftygirl - that would be truly be a test, considering my less-than-athletic physical condition... but I don't think I want the test of my mettle to involve corporate sponsorship.
@sean - Okay, now I get it. For me, it has been a way of life, not a midlife excursion. Much of that trip is documented in the memoirs linked from my main page, but here is one highlight.
@SuSu - re: "midlife excursion" - ouch, but that's a good point.
This issue of "mettle" has been nibbling at the edges of my conscious thought for a while, but now that I'm actively thinking about it, the notion that I can write "Test mettle next Thursday" on my calendar and somehow be done with it is ludicrous.
We can't choose tests like this - the tests choose us. The best we can do is to hope that we have the presence of mind to know when it happens.My friend and his aged father take a "still alive road trip" every year. You sound like you need adventure, but I'm curious if maybe your journey should be inward rather than dangerous. You could take yourself somewhere that may not be in your comfort zone and get to know where you are. Hang with the people, the places, the things. Conversations can be dangerous too. Maybe your situations in the past have already put you in that place. Anyway...I found my "mettle" or what every you want to call it in childbirth and child raising. ha ha ha
Great Blog. I discovered that I have a whole lot more "mettle" than I ever thought when I became a single mom and had to figure out how to forge a path for myself and my boys.
I watched the movie last week and very much enjoyed it.
Who is the colossal idiot - the one who follows their dream/fantasy, or the one who stays in their unhappy/unsatisfied life?
Not one thing you do or have could ever prove your mettle, it is what is in your mind, heart and soul as you do it that tests and proves.
Before enlightenment: make your bed, go for a walk.
After enlightenment: make your bed, go for a walk.
@llibra - the colossal idiot is the one who follows either path, without obtaining the basic knowledge they need to ensure that they live through it.
@sean - but that's the Catch-22, we are not going to live through it; so make your bed and go for a walk, (or just go for it)
I think humans were born with 'the basic knowledge', and we somehow lose sight of it as we age by our worrying and/or over-thinking, or something like that.
@llibra - look we can go back and forth like this forever, but I'd rather not.
You seemed to be rebutting my "colossal idiot" remark, so - I'm not saying that what Christopher McCandless did was without merit. I'm just saying that, with some basic sensible preparation, he could have done it without dying a horrible, premature death from starvation.
I've followed my dreams so far. If I had not, I wouldn't be where I am today.
...
Looking at that last sentence, I'm suddenly considering the notion that my problem might not be untested mettle at all. Maybe I just need a new dream to follow.
Maybe you do need a new dream!
I don't know shineola about midlife crises, I'm only 30, but I know where my mettle is. I went through a lot of crap to be as old as I am and I'm pretty darned glad that I made it without too much damage. And I think that maybe that's the only way to get your mettle tested: seredipitously. The fortunes of the world, yanno. I don't have the answers, but if I did I'd give you one.
I think you just need to de-rut and stretch your muscles in different ways, that what you're describing is more ennui than anything. I hope you find what you need.
I usually test metal by bending it back and forth alot till it breaks... or not. In either case I give it a chance to prove something... Oh, it's 'mettle'? sorry. Great, well written post by the way, an issue I started to consider after about the 12th temporarily successful exit from a life-and-death situation. Us being, among other things, animals, mettle may be unavoidably connected somewhere deep with physical survival, despite a wealth of 'higher-level' challenges.