Goin' Places

I destroyed my car last year. As much as I’d like to say I survived a fiery crash or flipped through the air several times à la Dr. Dre, the events in my life tend to be a lot less dramatic than that. In reality, all I did was put off getting an oil change… for about a month… in the middle of a very hot summer. Yet that was enough to render my poor little Mazda virtually undriveable. The car held on though, slowly huffing and puffing away throughout the semester to get me from Point A to Point B. I likened it to The Little Engine that Could. Sadly, however, by Thanksgiving, my little Japanese import could hold on no longer. I suddenly had no car, nowhere near enough money to buy another one, and too much pride to ask the majority of my friends for help. Needless to say, it was a sucky situation.

Things weren’t too bad, though, until I had to move at the end of the school year. My family lives roughly 100 miles from where I go to school – they couldn’t come and get me and there was no way I had the persuasive skills necessary to proposition a friend to drive me – and every possession that I own – home. I decided to stay close and get an apartment. The plan was to get a summer job, something within walking distance that would enable me to put some money in my pockets and start saving up for a new mode of transportation. I go to school in a fairly small town where everything is concentrated around the university so I figured that living near the center of the action would be my best bet. Unfortunately for me, when the majority of students went home for the summer, the local economy went along with them. No one was hiring and instead of saving up money to improve my situation, I was now rapidly losing money. Things couldn’t have been worse.

Then things got worse. When the majority of people skipped town for the summer, that number conveniently included all of my friends. This meant that a simple trip to the grocery store suddenly became a lot more complicated. Out of necessity, I soon became a master at the art of rationing meals. Luckily for me, a very good friend of mine* – whom my mom refers to as an angel – had business to take care of in town several times over the summer and stopped by to see me. This may very well have saved my life. Very good friend of mine, I wholeheartedly thank you.

The point of the story is this: out of all the bad that came out of not having a car, there actually did come some good. Being, for the most part, immobilized, I was forced to rediscover this thing called “walking”, an ancient form of transportation humans once used before we became lazy and addicted to our vehicles. Over the course of the summer, after all the job applications were sent out and reruns of Family Guy and The Office ceased to properly entertain me, I did a lot of walking. I walked to the library. I walked to the gym (which was a workout in itself). I walked just for the sake of walking. And in this walking, I discovered something I was desperately lacking in my life: peace. Walking, I soon found, is relaxing. When I walked, the world seemed to move a little slower. No longer was I rushing to get from place to place, crossing things off a mental to-do list as I went; I could just relax and enjoy the pace of life. I would get somewhere when I got there and until then, why worry?

I walked down streets and through neighborhoods I must have driven down a hundred times. Only now I noticed little secrets that in my high-paced driving life I had never seen before. I noticed beautiful houses, hidden gardens, new ambiances, and life. There were people and animals going about their days, civilization and nature coexisting in harmony. It had always been there but now I noticed. Now I wasn’t zipping by it at forty miles-per-hour.

At first I would avoid the main streets. I imagined the drivers were pointing and laughing at me behind their tinted windows. Look at that crazy kid walking in this heat while my air conditioner has me freezing! But the more I walked, the more clearly I saw. I may have been the outlier but at least I was free. I wasn’t a slave to some machine to get things done. It may take me a little longer to get to the same places but as long as it was nearby, I’d get there. And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that my way – although I admittedly was forced into it – may be the better way. I wasn’t stressed and pressed for time when going places. I didn’t have to shell out thousands of dollars on gas, insurance, and maintenance. All I needed were my legs, my MP3 player, and a few bottles of water and I was good to go. And talk about beneficial! While drivers sat on their butts munching on their fast food diets, I was getting quality exercise! I was literally improving my health and getting lean while going about my daily routine.

I’m not saying that motor vehicles are bad. They are a much-needed part of our society. Without them, we’d all quite possibly be inbred. What I’m saying is that maybe it’s not such a good idea to depend on vehicles all the time. It makes us weak as a species. For example, I won’t name names but I have literally been asked by a member of my family to drive a few houses down on the same block – a trip that would literally have taken no more than 15 seconds on foot. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this person to prevent them from walking. Nothing. Cars make us lazy. Yes, they give us great freedom but they also limit us in ways we don’t even realize. Walking – or jogging or biking – is liberating. You’re actually in an environment as opposed to being sheltered from it by some expensive metal contraption. You can feel the sun rays, hear the bees working, and see the things that are going on around you. You really don’t know what you are missing until you experience it. So I’d like to ask you to try it. Try it for a day – or longer if you’re brave enough. Save some money and get out of your car. It may change the way you see things. It may even change your life. Kermit the Frog once advised us to “get there fast and take it slow”. Sorry, Kermie, but getting there slowly works just fine for me. And I'm willing to bet it'll work for you, too.

*Names have been omitted to protect the innocent, the not-so-innocent, and myself.