Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Between stimulus and response is our greatest power- the freedom to choose”. In other words, a person’s greatest power is the fact that people can choose the way they respond to a situation. This could be related to the character Cheryl Strayed in the book, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed herself. In this book there were many moments when Cheryl had to make hard choices. Cheryl Strayed decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail all by herself in hopes of finding her true self again. She had the ability to choose what she wanted to do with her life and she did not choose to take the easier way out, but used her powers to turn her life around. She chose to believe in herself and continued …show more content…
Many people doubted her because they did not believe that a woman, alone, could survive in the Pacific Crest Trail. Instead of letting the negative comments stop her, she decided to use those negative comments as her deriving force to prove them wrong. This was shown when her ex-husband said, “’Perhaps you should try a shorter trip first’….” (Strayed 72). She could have responded to this situation by giving up but instead, she said that she went hiking before even though she did not. This shows how determined Cheryl was to prove everyone wrong and show them she, as a lone woman could be strong. Not only that, there has been many other instances on the trail where she had to decide whether she was going to continue on or quit. For example, in the book, she said, “’BEAR!’ I yelped, and reached for my whistle the moment after he turned and ran, his thick rum rippling in the sun as my whistle peeped its murderously loud peep” (Strayed 153). At that moment, she could have chosen to run but instead, the want to prove everyone wrong, and to come out of this trail as a stronger woman made her choose to stay and face the dangers. This shows how she chose to finally face her problems. Her littlest of actions shows that her greatest power is the freedom to choose because if she did not choose to believe in herself and hike the trail, she would have not become a