The Raw Throb of Existence

"By then Chris was gone. Five weeks earlier he'd loaded all his belongings into his little car and headed west without an itinerary. The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything. He had spent the past four years, as he saw it, preparing to fulfill an absurd and onerous duty: to graduate from college. At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence (Krakauer, Into the Wild, p.22)."

I recently had a conversation with a young man in bar about motorbikes. It occurs to me that many young men of my acquaintance between the ages of 17 and 35 desire to possess and to ride motorbikes. Statistics indicate that it is extremely dangerous to ride motorbikes and that this activity often results in grievous bodily harm and or death. I am intrigued as to what it is about this dangerous activity that so appeals to young men.

The young man in the bar thought it had to do with adrenalin. My step-father (who was once a young man between the ages of 17 and 35 who desired to possess and ride motorbikes) feels it is about masculine independence and freedom - just a man, a machine and the open road. Another friend uses his motorbike as a way of escaping civilisation when the presence of human beings becomes overwhelming.

Adrenalin. Independence. Freedom. Escape. The journey and the machine are inextricably tethered. Young men seek to escape from something, to be independent of something, to be free. What is it they wish to leave behind? Where do they wish to go? I believe that young men seek to experience the “raw throb of existence” through their relationship with the machine. They seek to be free of expectation. They seek distance from conformity so as to have the space to find out who they really are. The man and the machine have an existential relationship.

Youth and restlessness go hand in hand. I am not a young man and I do not desire to possess and ride a machine, yet I do yearn for independence, freedom, adventure and ultimately self-discovery and wisdom. I want to engage in an epic journey.
Chris McCandless loathed his opulent upbringing to such a degree that he would risk his life to escape it. I enjoy and am grateful for my safe and privileged upbringing - but I hunger to experience another side of life. Our parents and grandparents worked hard and suffered so that we would grow up safe and privileged, but the children of my generation yearn to be more exposed.

Like Chris McCandless, who followed his rigid moral code into the Alaskan wilderness, the young wish to expose themselves to anything and everything in the pursuit of the raw throb of existence. The trick, perhaps, is in staying alive and relatively undamaged so as to enjoy the self-discovery and wisdom when (and if) you find it.