My car is out of commission right now, so my mobility is exclusively foot-powered. I think I baby my car a little too much. Much of that is enjoying the results of taking old and worn out parts and giving them fresh, new life, really restoring something to quality. But after starting a big project yesterday, I found myself sitting on the garage floor once again, this time looking at an axle nut clearly destroyed inside, and knowing I didn’t have the tools to fix that.
I felt a number of pressures. The pressure to get angry and start yelling. The pressure to give up and fall into despair. The pressure to feel stupid. But these were all just pressures – selections of standard responses that are often available, that I’ve often felt before. But really, most of what I felt was calm. This is one of the first times I’ve experienced this in the face of a big, unexpected hurdle when working on my car.
Much of this calm comes from the fact that I work from home now. There’s no pressure to get my car fixed as soon as possible – I’m free to take my time. Moreover, this neighborhood has a supreme location as far as stores are concerned: we have grocery, thrift, department, convenience, pharmacy, and auto parts stores all available, as long as you’re willing to put some foot power into reaching them.
At the advice of a friend, I found a tool from the department store that should be able to take this axle nut off. I got to the counter and asked the cashier to double bag everything since I’d be walking a ways. The cashier, a young guy, was surprised. “Oh, wow, you walked here?!” and wished me “good luck!” when I left.
This world we live in is such a funny place at times. People will spend an hour at a gym but balk at a 30 minute walk. It’s rooted in our psychology: “Drive everywhere! You must have a car!”
And don’t get me wrong, I like having a car. It gets me to my parents’ house, it gets me to the mountains. It was getting me to work (before the pandemic started), and was allowing me to do cool stuff around town.
But isn’t it interesting how we all hate the expense of cars, but we use them for everything? Even when God gave us two feet that can do basically the same thing, but maybe over longer periods of time?
This whole pandemic has led me to question how often I use my car. With so much available by foot, I really have to wonder why I’m in such a hurry sometimes when I drive over to a place that only takes 15 minutes to reach by foot. Some people say cars were invented to save to time, but we really haven’t saved any time – we just spend more of our time driving! Buying all of our whims, running “errands” on the weekend. Driving, sometimes, just to feel like we are doing something, like we are being productive, when really we’re just wasting our money away.
I found a huge patch of hidden art in this neighborhood several weeks ago. It was really pretty amazing. It’s bootleg art, for sure, definitely set on a slice of public land. But you’d never know it was there unless you put your shoes on and went exploring. That’s what always gets me about traveling overseas: how can I hope to really explore the world, if I don’t first learn to explore my own backyard? I’m a big fan of this exploration. I love finding rare gems like that area.
And as I’ve mentioned before, if your entire life is tightly coupled to car ownership – if you are using your car for everything or absolutely can’t go a week without it – then car issues and expenses could be emotionally crippling. Either you pay a massive amount of money for a rapidly depreciating asset (a new car), or you take a gamble on an older car. In a sense, you can “pay” your way out of stress, but what happens if your fire hose of money doesn’t pay that high? Money can fix many stressors in our lives, but you can always find ways to out-stress your money. Finding ways to not need a 2000-pound gas-guzzling machine is, in my opinion, a smart thing to do if you have the opportunity (and the gumption) to do it.
Nonetheless, I’m still excited to get these parts changed and get my car back in commission.