“Here’s a personal story: I’ve had a hard time dating, and sometimes that’s because I like to be alone. Not for 27 years at a time, but I don’t mind a couple days a week.
It’s hard to tell someone, “I would like to be alone” without them hearing, “I don’t want to be with you.” Because, hey, that’s true. Being alone is not being with anyone.
The way I tried to make this better (“I don’t mean I don’t like YOU. I just don’t want to be with ANYBODY right now”) was not helpful to the cause. Because it made the other person feel unspecial. Of course I needed a break from the world, the riff-raff, but why someone I love?
Wanting to be alone will often make other people feel like shit. It’s oddly the most and least personal thing ever. On the part of the person who wants to be alone, it’s completely impersonal. On the side of the person being asked to do the leaving, it’s very personal.
This book is the story of a dude who parked his car, walked off into the woods, and didn’t speak to another person for almost 30 years.
Which is pretty weird, and then you find out the dude was living in the woods up to pretty recently, and it feels weirder. For some reason it would be less weird to me if this happened in, I don’t know, the 60’s? Or the 1800’s? I feel like this is sort of just what you did way back when, right? You walk off towards the woods at some point, and everyone just shrugs and is like, “Well, he was an alright dude. Hope he lives to the ripe age of 27.”
There’s a lot of moralizing going on with the hermit in this book, Christopher. Yes, he broke into cabins and stole food and stuff. Yes, that’s illegal.
But…by the end, I couldn’t help but feel like he was totally trapped. Because, truly, what happens to a person who doesn’t want to be around other people? It’s bad enough to just get an afternoon to yourself, let alone a couple decades.
This is gonna get a little cosmic or whatever, so, I dunno, slap me next time you see me.
I don’t think what he did was that crazy, and the reason this seems to bring such strong reactions out of people is…because I think this is a story that challenges reality.
Reality is that you go to school, graduate, go to college, get a job, buy a house, have a family, and work until retirement. Which, if you’re lucky, comes a decade before either your body or mind is of no use to anyone else. You make friends who you see three times a year, you pay off your student loans someday, you are good to your family.
This is reality in that it’s what is really happening. But just because this is what’s happening doesn’t mean it’s the only option.
This dude didn’t set out to prove that the typical course is not reality, but he did succeed in providing one of the very few alternative narratives. He wasn’t lazy. He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t angry. He just wanted to be by himself, and that doesn’t work with the typical narrative at all.
And being honest, I think people get so pissed at this story because it’s one of very few narratives that shows that a completely atypical path exists. And if a path THAT deviant exists…maybe that means there are lots of slightly different paths that I could have taken.
I think people get pissed at this story because they read this alternative version of reality, and they feel that someone’s questioning their reality, their life choices. I think it makes people feel defensive because, Hey, I ain’t so bad. Why do you not want to live anywhere near me, huh?
I think it makes people feel defensive because you can’t help but wonder. When you’re reading this book, and when you’re reading something bordering on saying “You work in a cubicle. YOU are the crazy one!” and when you think, “Well, he’s not wrong. Living like a hermit is crazy, but work life is also pretty out there” then you have to wonder. You have to wonder whether it might not be such a bad idea to wander off into the woods. At least you’d have some new LinkedIn endorsements when you decided to come back.”