There are two types of men: those who change to fit the world, and those who change the world to fit them.

Every person faces this choice. Every person must decide. Most people choose to fit the world. They believe that such a large, abstract concept representing billions of people either cannot be changed, or should not be changed. The other group carves out a home in whatever chunk of the world they see fit.

Without a doubt, the easier path is to fit the world; it already has a nice niche ready for you – it tells you what to do, and may even pat you on the head for following each step of the way. You have surrendered your choice for the illusion of choice; you accept without question that everyone else is right simply because they are not you. You will most likely lead a content life. After all, this process of niche-filling has worked for millennia. And I must extend a great deal of thanks to you, you make the world run, so, “Kudos!” to you.

But there is often a pressing sense that something greater lay just around the river bend. This is a more uncommon path, laden with rapids, rocks, and dangers. Those who choose this path pay great costs and receive great rewards. Those with excellent pathfinding skills can even weave between the dangerous path and the easy one. They push themselves, then rest and share their experiences on the easy road, and eventually find themselves pushing the very limits of mankind and expanding the possibilities for all of man.

And then we have the peculiar case of those who must take the unbeaten path. There is a surrealism to these folk. An sense of eccentricity and oddity emanates from them like odor from a compost pile. They tackle the same challenges of the pathfinder, but without pause. They are the wild men and women. They are the hunter gathers, the secret finders, and the guide persons. They know the rough and dirty side of the world, and they accept it because it is all they know. The easy path is strange and unappealing – it does not fit them. They are the one thing that is not like the other.

There is an unending endurance to the latter. We have a stronger stride, a drum with a unique beat. We have a tremendous threshold for pain and capacity for compassion. We can take the harshness of life and even the burdens of others’ because we have a unique source of energy: ourselves and our wilderness.