About a month ago my truck wouldn’t start. It made me spiral. I didn’t know why. I didn’t have the money to fix it. But it was safe in a garage and I had planned my life to walk here before I was lucky enough to have a vehicle.
For the last month I have been forced to walk more. To work, to the store, to go out.
I have found it is the best thing that could have happened.
When the truck broke, I began to spiral, so much of my personal freedom has always been tied into having a vehicle.
Getting a license is a rite of passage. It is the first time as a youth you can have self determination. It is a societal demand, a badge of honor and a badge of shame when you can’t drive.
The American dogma loves the car, the truck and all that it entails. You aren’t a real adult if you don’t drive. Jobs that don’t even need you to drive will not hire you if you can’t drive. They don’t trust you can make it to work without a vehicle.
I felt a lot of shame when the truck broke and I couldn’t immediately fix it.
But then in the midst of my spiral. I started walking again.
Walking was a big part of me surviving during COVID and unemployment. I went almost 4 years without a car. No cost of insurance, garage, gas all that.
But I saw so much of the world different when I started to walk. I slowed down and saw things differently.
In the last month I have discovered that again. I moved here thinking I wouldn’t have a vehicle. I picked my apartment thinking I wouldn’t have a vehicle.
In the last month I have seen more of my local community through walking than I did in the 13 months of driving.
It has reminded me how the simple act of walking is a natural therapy. It provides perspective, exercise and peace.
I am a better me after a walk. After seeing all the vilification of technology and screens over the past several decades, I think that we as a society have missed the point.
The screens are the red herring. The inherent problem is that we stopped moving, stopped being physical beings, became click and stick.
I have been better for the walking in the last month. I need to walk. It helps me regulate my darkness, my chaos and makes me breathe.
Maybe. Maybe. It’s not technology that is killing us. But our lack of connection to being a physical being. Take a walk. See the world that you can’t see when you’re paying attention to the road.
Forget the shame of shiny vehicles and status. And just take a walk.
