Recommended video, and The Only Trick to Controlling Your Destiny

My cousin Summer recommended this video to me, and now I'm recommending it to you. It's an actual "feature-length" movie, over an hour long, so don't jump in if you're, I don't know, on a lunch break or something.

Kintaro Walks Japan

The film is a documentary about this guy who has graduated from college and isn't sure what to do with his life, so he decides to walk the entire length of Japan, partially to find his father's birthplace, partially to impress his half-Japanese girlfriend whose father walked the entire length of North America, and partially because "when you give yourself to the journey, the journey gives itself to you."
It's a great story, and also got me thinking about the limits of the human spirit and destiny and all that. The whole trip took him about five months, which is about the length of time I've been working as a host as Koisan Japanese Cuisine.
That's not an insignificant amount of time, but it's not long at all in the grand scheme of things. Most anyone I know could take a few months off to have a great adventure.
Some of them have.
But a lot of them haven't.
I don't know if that's necessarially a bad thing. A peaceful, uneventful life is nothing to spit at. But it does seem to me that everyone should complete at least one extraordinary undertaking while they are on this planet, something that fulfills some sort of destiny.
The question then becomes: what is destiny? I think it is whatever makes your story incredible (which is, of course, why it's such a common theme in incredible stories). Theoretically, most any able-bodied 24 year-old man with just a touch of insanity in him should be able to walk the length of Japan. If they did, this movie would be a lot less interesting.
What is it that brought this one guy to do it, though? I have a hard time believing that he was simply MEANT to do it. Perhaps he was COMPELLED to do it, but that's not the same thing. I've been compelled to do a lot of amazing things, but taken a nap or something instead, always with the sensation that it was a concious choice, and that at any moment I could spring from my bed and embrace some particular destiny.
There are external factors as well of course -- the walk-across-Japan guy has a lot of people pushing for him, which I'm sure makes the journey that much easier -- but I think it ultimately comes down to two steps:
a). being compelled
and
b). saying "YES"
and oh, I guess there are actually three things:
c). not giving up, no matter what.

I think we're all compelled by a lot of things. A girl who I work with at the sushi bar was telling me how she was quitting her job to, well . . . she wanted to go to design school, but she also might get her teaching credential and teach Spanish, or go back to school for a master's degree, or might teach overseas, or . . .
It's a common feeling for us post-graduates. It's a common feeling for everyone, I think.
The hardest part is that first step, step b)., the step TO BE, the step to YES.
But I think that it is perhaps the only real trick to controlling your destiny.

What do you choose?