Lessons Minimalism Has Taught Me
Taking Back Time and Experience
Minimalism isn’t for everyone. But don’t wait until feeling ready. There’s no such thing as feeling ready.
Any straws you grasp onto are just straws.
By releasing 90% of space and belongings, citizenship in the broader world increases by 90%. The less we own, the richer we become. The less we cling, the more we grow.
Sometimes the choice is to let go of possessions or let our souls die working jobs we hate merely to try to make enough money for more space than we actually need for nothing more than to house all the possessions we don’t need. Time and experience are the true precious commodities, which everyone realizes by the end. If possessions and space are eating up all of one’s time and preventing the joy of life, then the right choice is likely to give up some, most, or all, of the possessions and space.
We can look for different, higher-paying jobs to purchase larger space and more possessions – but upon enough reflection, it may prove that we’re already doing what we’re best at and what we will be happiest doing. Even if we remain materially poorer, we may find ourselves and also our families experientially and emotionally richer.
For some, minimalism is an epiphany of eastern spirituality. For others, it’s a non-choice, a result of tumultuous losses, a forced step to preserve the best of what is left of life. In other words, the possessions don’t all release in some mystical puff of eastern spirituality and New Age joy. It may be agony and freeing at the same time.
Choice or not at the start, how one reacts is negotiable, along with what one does with the freed-up time and experience.
We all travel at times on long tracks of inaction or mistake-making. The moment to let go comes at a different juncture for everyone. Don’t self-blame for not arriving at the decision sooner; don’t regret years wasted – they weren’t wasted. We can only take action when things get clear, however long that takes.
The moment things get clear is not the same thing as feeling ready. The time of feeling ready never comes. Letting go is hard at first anyway, and the culture bears too many messages saying not to do it, that we can only be happy purchasing infinite possessions, that we need the latest and best possession, that we must constantly try to escape the present moment to some future moment that will be “better.” Extraordinary power and many billions of dollars go into this, and it is very, very convincing. But all of that is not more powerful than a single soul. Anyone can opt out of the seduction and let the gaslighting go on without them, reclaiming the present moment; reclaiming time and experience.
Life leads to minimalism anyway as the final whistle stop. The sooner the arrival at this truth, the sooner the rendezvous with acceptance and peace.
Goodbye little ship in dusty frame
Economy
What is needed is radically less than the loads people bear. For some of us, the years spent pursuing the American Dream were years full of lies and dead ends, a kind of scam. Letting go of possessions and space, even in the face of towering loss and parallel tracks of grief, finally gives way to peace.
Some of us have stalled out on the far stretched-out ends of a budget and a breakdown, living paycheck to paycheck. Relinquishing possessions and space relieves this suffering, makes it possible to create a plentiful buffer of savings, and even still be able to afford small expenses that contribute to real happiness – all the more appreciated because of not being enslaved to worry at all times.
The resulting calm and tranquil mind leads to better mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health.
Confidence also arrives with cutting back; knowing how to do it leads to certainty that expenses and lifestyle could be cut back even further if required or desired.
Many strive for large amounts of space and possessions for the sake of their children, which is admirable motivation; however, possessions do not make children happy any more than possessions make adults happy. Children are happiest when experientially and emotionally rich just as adults are happiest when experientially and emotionally rich.
While it might have felt at first like we were giving up something, progress on life goals accelerates, and the progress becomes easier, not harder. With life simplified, clarity increases around deep-seated values.
Not only is time freed by working less, but by letting go of the possessions, we free up the time we used to spend moving the possessions around, trying to polish and clean and maintain the possessions; and we free up the emotional energy we used to go waste by constantly fretting over the fact that we didn’t have adequate time to properly move, polish, clean, and maintain the great number of possessions.
Goodbye dusty childhood jewelry box
Possessions
Minimalism looks different for everyone. Deciding what to keep is a very individual choice. Even if it’s large, if it’s something you use and love, keep it. Some decisions on what to keep are best made by logic; others by the heart; others by the gut.
Some small precious keepsakes should also be kept. Deciding which ones is difficult. If it is an item that also has any utility (for example, a box), this helps. Size is also a factor (tiny is easier to justify, medium-size harder), along with whether the item brings happiness or insightful contemplation of personal values.
If it brings bad memories or inner criticisms, let it go.
When hesitating on items, take photos of them before you send them away. Or don’t. When you see the photos later on your phone, you may shrink away. But one day you can also delete the photos.
Some may want to sell their possessions, and this can be the right choice. However, others will want to let go largely and all at once to charities, so that the possessions are not sitting around staring them in the face while they contemplate asking prices.
Yes, at first there is sharp pain and grief with every carload of possessions released. But there is also a freeing catharsis. Now you can go anywhere and be anything.
Later there will be random stabs of grief or guilt over just a few particular released possessions. However, the stab is temporary and fleeting while the time to do what you love is ongoing and permanent.
Later it will prove that it was in fact a mistake to let go of a few of the possessions. This is inevitable. However, there is a degree of acceptable collateral damage that is justified for the rewards gained. For the few releases that were a mistake, there were hundreds more that were right.
Much more frequently, you will find yourself with no regrets.
Goodbye kitchen witch. Thank you for the luck in making tasty dishes.
The Ancestors
Some of us may look back wondering why we didn’t do this sooner – it might even seem embarrassing because the answer was so simple. But this is unfair. For many, there is some generational distance necessary – a gap of death – since parents, grandparents, great-parents (the Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation, the Baby Boomers) so fully set a certain example by embodying and embracing the American Dream (that is, voluminous space and possessions); it is still hard for some of us to come to terms with the Dream being far more difficult to attain now, the economic realities (and many other realities of our present world) being utterly different than the Ancestors’ circumstances.
Don’t hold on to possessions thinking it is somehow for the Ancestors’ sake, whether land, house, general possessions, or even heirlooms. If clinging to any of these is undermining your joy and fulfillment, the Ancestors would not want this for you. They have gone on to something else. Honoring the Ancestors does not require clinging to any of their space or possessions; honoring the Ancestors is living our own lives to the fullest. The Ancestors didn’t make their noble sacrifices to deliver us here only to be unhappy and unfulfilled.
There will be times that you believe you were temporarily mad to have let go of some particular possession. In some cases, this will have been a practical thing, and you can purchase or borrow another; in other cases, it will have been because of a connection to some person, usually an Ancestor. Remind yourself that you are now living your best life to honor them.
Goodbye graduation hood
If You Have Already Been Unfairly Forced to Let Go of Too Much
If you have had a great deal of grief and loss: You may be afraid to let go of many little possessions because you feel they are all you have left. But letting go even more deeply may help you in honoring the one you lost by freeing yourself to move on. The heart always remembers; the heart does not depend on one of the lost one’s possessions, let alone many of their possessions. Keeping around one or two of the loved one’s precious belongings is usually enough for gentle contemplation and honoring.
Some of us built up possessions in connection with nesting: the notion that we would have progeny. For those of us who then ended up childless, once that acceptance sets in, so too can the acceptance that there is no need for the space or possessions – that the greatest gift to oneself would be letting go. Making room for greater love and care of self is wise since there will not be others.
Nevertheless, parents, too, can embrace minimalism; having too many possessions can later be a burden on a child – we have all had parents, grandparents, great aunts or uncles, who passed away and left behind mountains of possessions with very little instruction of what to do with any of it.
If you are beyond the middle stage of life, if the truth for you so far has been a sunken cost fallacy - an investment in many possessions associated with a life that didn’t happen - stop holding on against all logic. Holding on is also what is keeping the pain fixed in place. Though grieving sometimes in the hugeness of it and the ongoing need for forgiveness of it all, on the other side there’s a soft and open-ended joy and peace.
Goodbye music box that played “The Long and Winding Road.” Thank you for the bittersweetness.
Driving, Part Two: Cars Are More Important than Life Itself
When we meet in person, most of us wear social veneer, feigning politeness, using the manners our parents and grandparents taught us. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. A quote from Goethe that I write frequently on the board for my students is: “Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.” We’d all be in a world of hurt if we didn’t use manners and feign kindness even when we don’t feel like it (especially when we don’t feel like it). But the simple truth is that being cut off inside a car removes the necessity for this – or seems to do so. For this reason, I have long felt that driving reveals some greater truth about how humans feel about other humans (as well as non-humans) in this world.
In cars there is an anonymity and an illusion of being isolated from others that leads to a greater emotional truth. People cut each other off, honk angrily, speed senselessly, text dangerously, curse loudly, and often fail to acknowledge or even perceive the existence of others around them. These are behaviors that most people would never exhibit face to face, but I would argue that perhaps our driving selves are closer to our “real” selves. When we drive, no one is faking it. Deep down, despite how we present ourselves in person, once inside a car our real self kicks in, and everyone really is that rude and self-destructive and dangerous and senseless and insensitive to the existence of others. In drivers there is also the occasional kindness or display of intelligence or common sense or consideration of others – but this seems disturbingly rare.
I’ve written about how others sometimes angrily blare horns at me if I don’t pull out fast enough. But probably the person who angrily blares a horn at me would be nice to me in person. The difference is that shut off in our cars, no one sees me as a human being. I’m guilty of it, too. In several “anonymous” driving situations when another driver showed anger toward me, and I had no idea who he or she was, and I knew I would never see that driver again, I will admit to making unmistakably clear hand gestures.
As I drove my long commute back and forth from college every week for several years between 2003 and 2007, it struck me that any particular busy road is a microcosm, a kind of snapshot, of the state of humanity. Cars place us into juxtaposition with each other in the worst possible ways (i.e. in a potential instrument of death), and driving as an act is purely democratic and random, throwing together people of all walks of life, all socioeconomic statuses, all temperaments. The results of this experiment do not seem encouraging to me. There are times when people are kind or are actually paying attention to others. But there seem to be many more times of unmindful and uncaring behavior. This, to me, does not bode well for humanity. If in the simple act of driving a car we cannot show consideration for one another, I see very little chance that we will ultimately pull together for the many different complex solutions that will be necessary for the survival of the human race on this planet – solutions that would require collaboration, tolerance, and consideration of others.
On the other hand, I suppose it is rather miraculous that we don’t have more car crashes than we do, or that we haven’t already managed to obliterate ourselves from this world in a massive nuclear holocaust. Maybe the fact that we are as selfish and unfeeling and uncaring as we are and that things aren’t worse is a marvel worthy of celebration.
Similar to the fact that when I was a teenager I thought I’d drive a Harley Davidson, I actually rather admire the art and beauty and sport and love of cars. And similar to the fact that I love Breaking Bad, a show that could not be further from my own sensibilities, I’m actually quite fascinated with anything to do with cars, a mode of transportation that could not be further from my own sensibilities. For example, I love the British show Top Gear. So, I don’t have a problem with cars per se, and I don’t think the problem is the cars. The problem, as usual, is the people. I’m not a car-hater, but a misanthrope.
For me, as for most people in this world, a car is simply a manner of conveyance from one place to another. The reason for this is that, like most people, I don’t have the purchasing power for it to be anything other than that. I don’t have the option of buying a luxury car or viewing a car as a luxury item. Despite my age, the best car I can afford on what I make is still the car on the very bottom rung – the one typically considered to be a “starter” car. This is the kind of car that better-off people buy for their high school kid, or to be the second car for the wife to pick up some groceries in. At my age, I’d hoped for better, but it’s better than nothing.
But though the car I own (or nearly own if I ever finish the payments) is one of the cheapest cars available, it nevertheless commands the largest part of my income, and is therefore a far more powerful force in my life than I would frankly like for it to be. If you are much richer than me, perhaps you have much more in your life than a car. But I don’t have a place of my own, and my car is by far my largest asset, and my biggest bill is by far my car payment. In my miniscule budget, my car commands quite a lot of my resources. When a car dominates your resources so centrally because your resources are so small, it also exerts great power – indeed, disproportionate and unjustifiable power -- over your life.
Not only can cars kill whatever we hold most dear, but even accidents without loss of life can have a tremendous impact (pun intended, I guess). The one accident I have had in all my adult years totaled my car. I was not at fault, nor could the most masterful defensive driving or quickest reaction time have prevented the accident. The other party was an elderly gentleman in a large pick-up truck and he ran a stop sign, T-boning me on the right. As the old saying goes, fortunately, neither of us was seriously hurt.
However, an accident and the loss of a car can have other major ramifications on our lives. My life at the time of that accident was terribly complicated. I had moved from Raleigh to Aberdeen, North Carolina to teach high school. I had no desire whatsoever to teach at that level, but felt at the time like it was my only option to try to earn a living. I did not yet have my teaching license, but was enrolled in the NC Teach program, doing the parallel entry training. I desperately needed work, and sent my resume out all over North Carolina, landing a job at a rural North Carolina high school. But the entire venture was doomed from the start.
Forced to make a quick decision – the semester started less than two weeks later – I moved to the area not knowing a single soul. Friendless and alone, I started my job and did not gel with my colleagues at all. They banded together with prefect rapport, and I was clearly the outsider. They did not like me. I was teaching in a rough high school with some very challenging students, and the students were crucifying me, too. I was not doing anyone any good – my colleagues, my students, or myself.
When my car was totaled (only two blocks from the high school on my way to work one morning), it took me out of work for a few days for my bruises to heal – but it also put about $17,000 of insurance money in my pocket, covering the combination of my totaled car and my hospital bills. When I tried to return to work, the time I had missed had made me even more the outsider to both the teachers and the students. It was clear by that point that I could not possibly make up the lost ground and the lost time; this high school was not the place for me. It was also clear that $17,000 was more than enough for a ticket out of there. Basically, the accident was the largest and final factor that justified my making a break for it.
In some sense, because my car was totaled, that accident rammed me halfway across the country, from North Carolina all the way back to my hometown of Indiana. It was like the proverbial hand dealt by fate. Though I got a respectable insurance pay-out on my 2004 Toyota Corolla, this is also when I learned that if you had a dependable car that could have gone 200,000 miles, and it only had 40,000 miles on it at the time and had been excellently maintained, and it was paid off to boot, insurance does not even remotely begin to recoup you for your loss. I still think with stinging regret about how I could still be driving that car right now, payment-free. As it is, I got a new car, saddling myself once again with payments, then took the insurance money and used it to move back to Indiana and to renovate a place to live in the old family stead, and was able to find suitable work teaching college. I can still feel the reverberations of that accident; it had a tremendous impact on my living where I do, and in so many ways accounts for where I stand today.
It is difficult to escape our cars and the powerful hold that they have over every aspect of our lives. But it is possible from time to time. I had the pleasure of visiting Mackinac Island in Michigan last summer. This was the first vacation of my entire life that I had ever gotten to choose for myself (another ramification of having very low purchasing power), and one reason I made that choice was because I was fascinated to see what a culture without cars would be like. Granted, I also wanted to be without the stress of dealing with a car while on vacation. I’m not overly fond of the sensation of constantly driving around lost in an unfamiliar location – to me it takes away much of the pleasure of even bothering to go on a trip.
So yes, this car-free vacation was of great interest to me on many levels, and my instincts were spot-on, as on a personal level it was the most enjoyable vacation I ever had. But it wasn’t just that I didn’t have to get behind the wheel of a car and deal with all the stresses of navigating an unfamiliar place. It was that there was something special about being in touch with the full environment of the island during the entire vacation and about never having to shut myself off from other people inside the cage of a car. Dependent on either my own two feet or horses, there was never a moment that I felt physically isolated. This sense of interaction on Mackinac Island is without a doubt one of the main factors that makes the experience unique and pleasurable.
In season, the main drag on Mackinac really bustles. The town itself is sort of multi-layered back into the hills. Visible from afar (from the water) is another level above the buildings along the main street; this level is made up of large houses as well as the fort. When on the island itself, one primarily perceives the main buildings of the town, but in fact the town stretches back for some distance. Along the main drag are major hotels, eateries, and shops, accessible right off of the harbor. At either end of this busy route are quiet inns, private residences, open views of the lake, and sleeping quarters for staff. Here the traffic thins out, as it also does further back in the town in the “inner layers” of specialty shops, businesses, small inns, and more private residences (winding back to the palatial Grand Hotel, sitting high on a peak, visible from far away and from the lake).
There are porches, too, on Mackinac Island. Lots and lots of porches everywhere. Small porches, big porches, long, short, covered, uncovered, stacked one atop another. Porches facing the water, and porches facing the street. And from these porches, people interact with everything that’s going on in the street. And in the street, the traffic is always bustling as soon as you hit the main stretch of town, and you almost can’t move in it. And by traffic, I don’t mean cars. I mean bikes, carriages, horses, and people afoot. People pour in along the throughways coming in from the ferries. Many of the workers on Mackinac come back season after season. Even if they don’t, they quickly become acquainted with one another. And since no one is shut off in cars – workers and residents and visitors to the island alike – there is a lot of interaction. It’s more than interaction. It’s camaraderie, repartee, and rapport. People interact at all social levels and all physical levels – above the street, on the street, even below the street. From every nook and cranny, people interact with each other. They interact with each other even from the many different stories of porches, all the way down to the street below and back up to the tops of the buildings.
I’m sure this sort of culture exists in other parts of the world besides this particular resort culture on Mackinac Island. But Mackinac Island is within my reach since it’s not far from where I live. My life remains circumscribed and provincial, and I haven’t seen most other parts of the world. But in the part of the world where I live, car culture is certainly everything, and if you don’t have a car, you can forget ever getting anywhere.
But evidence seems to suggest that a lack of cars can have the impact of making us all more in touch with each other, more charming and companionable, as on Mackinac. This is common sense, to be sure, and is also backed up by a sizeable amount of sociological research. Consider, for example, the traditional European square, where people interact freely and cars still don’t trespass. More communication with one another and less sitting behind windshields and metal doors means better socialization and less suspicion of one’s neighbors. Some studies have demonstrated lower rates of crime where there are healthy spaces for human interaction and economic activity with no cars present. This makes good sense. If being in contact with one another compels us to behave, and if being behind the glass and metal of a car makes us feel even in some small sense as though we are cut off from others and from the environment, and that the car is an extension of our ego, and that we can do as we please without repercussions, this is a potential recipe for disaster.
Cars are of course legally considered to be weapons since they can quite easily be used to kill people. Hit and runs occur either on purpose or by accident. Either way, little to no responsibility or regard is taken, and the victim(s) is no less dead. Of course, most deaths on the road are unintentional. The loss of life from these countless numbers of automobile accidents doesn’t even bear thinking about.
Even more commonly killed by cars than people are of course animals, both wild and domestic. If there is a dead animal in the road and I am on my way to work, I try to make sure I don’t look at it too directly or focus my vision on it. It takes everything I have just to walk into a classroom, so if I’m also walking into the room upset, it’s not a good way for me to start. I won’t write about most of the times I have observed animals killed by a car. In grad school, my colleagues mocked me (I suppose the more polite term would be “teased,” but really, they were mocking me) because I couldn’t even stand it when animals were harmed in one of their stories being workshopped. They seemed to find my pain over this to be uproariously funny.
I make no secret of the fact that I am far closer to animals than I am to people. If driving along in our cars any of us were to see a human child in the road getting hit, of course we would all stop immediately in horror. In contrast, many people don’t react at all the hitting of a dog or cat. Yet the way that I perceive animals and hold them in my heart, they are like children to me. So to watch while someone else continues to run over an animal, without even slowing down, is an unspeakable horror to me.
One day I was driving on the innocuous roads of my hometown. (Innocuous except for the fact that for some reason in North Vernon we have no left turn lanes anywhere we need them and what left turn lanes we do have tend to be in places that we don’t need them. That’s our thing, I guess.) I was thinking about nothing much. I teach so much freshman comp that I don’t really have to prepare or think about it much ahead.
When teaching freshmen, my major goal is not to teach them anything (though if I’m lucky, I might do a bit of that), but within my small power to do anything I can to help students feel more reassured and less alone. This is probably not due to any resemblance to Mother Theresa on my part, but because so much of the time in my life I have felt alone and have needed reassurance, but there was usually none to be had. I figure that maybe there might be times that others might need this as well. Even the most confident individuals have moments of insecurity and fear and self-doubt, and moments when they are afraid to speak up or to find out if others are feeling the same things.
So I was thinking about nothing much. It was an evening class, and I was on the road a bit after 5:00 p.m. in what passes for thick traffic in my small town. I was several cars back, stopped at a red light when a cat unwisely ventured out into the crosswalk in hopes of making it across the road. The light turned green.
I watched the drivers in front of me and saw their faces. They saw the cat in front of their wheels, but they went anyway.
It’s a human idea to die with dignity, I guess. But surely every form of life wishes to die as painlessly and quickly as possible, and it seems to me that this is a kind of dignity. This death was neither painless nor quick and it was without dignity on the part of anyone involved. It involved convulsions and a face of the purest terror and pain I have ever witnessed, an attempt to escape and cling to life, and the failure at it.
We make scathing comments about people who hurt or kill animals for no reason – but the only difference in this instance that justified these people’s actions in their own minds is that they were in their cars. The human-engineered stoplight turned green, and somehow this superseded compassion for other life forms trying to live in this world with us, or for their right to life. There was a very simple choice presented to these human drivers – the choice was to press the accelerator or keep their foot on the brake. To get out of the car to help the animal or to drive on.
Would people have acted more compassionately if not in cars? It’s almost moot since the cars themselves are the weapons, and so without them, there would have been no death. I think there can be no doubt that cars at their worst act as a kind of armor that keeps in all that is worst in human nature, and keeps out any better influences. But, no – more accurately, this is simply humans acting at their worst while they happen to be inside cars. Cars are just the excuse, the justification. I’m very much afraid that the selves we display when inside a car are our true selves. Feeling protected from other eyes, cut off from better influences, people just don’t care. It is only pressure from society, from peers, from the opinions of others who we know we may see again, or who we are encountering face to face, that keeps us acting decently. If the many different aspects of the modern world that shut us off from others (not just cars, but online classes, Facebook, TVs and so on) are perceived as giving us permission to act badly – if these act as temptations to let our darker natures take over – that’s perhaps a good argument in favor of making sure we maintain face to face contact in this world in all the ways we possibly can and that we don’t let the world get any more impersonal than it already is.
After the drivers had decided the cat’s fate, I pulled around the corner where there was a parking space, stopped, and ran over to see if I could help the cat. But of course by then, it was far too late.
I got back into my car and drove the rest of the way to my teaching gig. I turned the car off and sat there in silence, my mind replaying how people looked as they had driven on. Seeing, but not caring. Isolated in their vehicles. Cut off by glass and metal, and so perhaps feeling less culpable. I thought about how I didn’t ask to be born into a world with as little compassion as this one, and didn’t want to be. I thought about our arrogance and abuse of the idea that we are more important than other life on this planet, and about the human decision that it is more important to make the car go forward because the light is green than to save a small life. I thought about the sheer indolence of what had happened – that it was too much trouble to stop the car and jump out to help another. I wondered how we keep going on despite all the thousands of incidents both big and small that make us lose all faith. I thought about the absurdity that for sheer survival – to earn a paycheck and put food on the table – even if we don’t wish to do so, we’re forced to drive around in loud, metal vehicles of destruction that kill both animals and people. All of this sounds ludicrously like Mad Max. Despite the apparently shiny surface to this world, maybe it is.
I went inside to teach, and before we started the class, I did the only thing I could do – I told my students about what I had seen and what I felt. Some did not care, some pretended to but didn’t, and a few felt as I did. For a few moments, I felt somewhat less isolated and alone. Maybe they did, too.
Driving, Part One: Getting in the Way of the President of the United States
Dear police and secret service: So sorry I was in the way. That one time in Indianapolis when the former President Bush was held up? July 14, 2005? That was me. I was attending summer school at IUPUI that summer, and I was that last car through – the innocuous gray 2003 Toyota Corolla – before you closed the roads for the President to pass through unimpeded. There I was, the lone car on the streets, in a horror show of mortification, like running some custom-made gauntlet for bumbling oafs like me.
After I rolled down my window and asked inane questions about whether I was allowed through, I didn’t know whether to gun it and get out of the President’s way as fast as I could, or go the speed limit since I was surrounded by more police than I had ever seen in my life. I chose something in between, but whatever it was wasn’t good enough. The police officer who waved me on through just stood shaking his head in disgust at my ineptitude as I started my gauntlet run.
I don’t think there is anything that has ever made me feel more apologetic towards the rest of the human race than driving.
The attendant of a parking lot once told me that in twenty years of running the lot, he had never seen anyone park as stupidly as I had. Needless to say, this made me feel terrific about myself, and did wonders to raise my confidence for the next time I chose to venture outside my house. This man’s kind words will stick with me forever. (And in fact I have never been back to that area – not out of anger, but out of fear of further soul-crushing rebukes from lot attendants.)
Just to be perverse, I sometimes wish to add these items to a CV or resume:
Delayed the President of the United States.
Accomplished the stupidest parking feat ever.
And why not? It might at least get someone’s attention. My “serious” accomplishments turn few heads.
Without a doubt, parking is my worst handicap as a driver, and no degree of practice or strategizing has ever made me any better at it. I will never forget a particularly nasty letter left on my windshield at IUPUI.
I’m not going to elaborate on it any further than that. I’ll just never forget it.
Isn’t it remarkable the way we remember nastiness? It’s like mild PTSD. That’s how it is for me, anyway. It shouldn’t be so. The nastiness of people is what should fall away from our memories, and our minds should vividly hold on instead to the kindnesses people perform. But no such luck. You have to fight to force your mind to hold on to the good things; it’s a deliberate act that you have to decide to do. Meanwhile, the bad memories come upon you at all times unwelcome and unbidden. It’s sort of like how that one bad apple in a classroom can ruin the entire experience from the instructor’s perspective, even though the other 98% of students in the class are the most wonderful human beings imaginable. It’s so sad that the 2% wield such power.
But though the person who left the note on my windshield might have been a bad apple, most of the individuals who roll their eyes in disgust at my driving are not bad apples. They are simply individuals pushed to their limits by their jobs. They are stressed out and paid far too little – and then on top of that, who shows up, but me?
Police officers are often furious with me. The very fact that I ever made the trip down the birth canal seems to piss them off. This is unfortunate, because I have such awe and respect for what they do. But I can see why they would have contempt one such as me. It is probably unnecessary for me to observe that navigating the physical world and dealing with real world issues are not my strong suits.
I can’t imagine how stressful it would be to have to direct traffic. I recall about six months ago a policeman directing traffic at the scene of an accident at an intersection. I hesitated, not sure if I was supposed to be going or not. The officer went into a furious dance – it looked sort of like an 80s break dancing move – pointing accusingly toward me to make my damned left turn, already.
Such wild gesticulations, placing an exclamation point upon my idiocy, haunt me for days, even weeks, replaying in my head, making me unsure whether to laugh or cry. But who am I kidding? Though I’d prefer to salvage part of my existence by using it to bring others laughter, there’s no laughing in it for me.
I hasten to add that my incidents of utter bumbling nincompoopery while driving are relatively unusual. It’s not like I’m a hazard on the road. The only times I struggle are when I am in unfamiliar situations, like at the scene of an accident or in a place I’ve never been before. So, I try my hardest to avoid unfamiliar situations and I stick with the regular commute to work, the regular parking spaces, and so on.
But that kind of proscribed existence is a bit of a problem. In the U.S., the car has long been seen as a prime symbol of independence and roving and freedom and having good times. My own relationship with the automobile, having been fraught with difficulties, is no doubt one element that contributes to my reclusiveness. There is no escaping that the car is how we get places in the United States (well, except maybe in NYC), and more to the point, to other people. If you have trouble driving freely and limitlessly, you will have trouble connecting with others. It’s that simple.
When I was in my early teens I listened to a lot of heavy metal, and I was convinced beyond any doubt that my first ever mode of transportation was going to be a motorcycle. Specifically, a Harley Davidson. No joke. It is truly remarkable how little my young mind comprehended how I’m put together; and it is nothing less than astonishing how long it took me to grasp the full extent of it.
So no, there was never a motorcycle in my life, and there never will be. Indeed, I’ve had many a man dump me because I won’t even get on the back of one. However, this is not through any sheer stick-in-the-mud pigheadedness on my part, but rather it is for others’ protection as well as mine. From what the secret service, police, and parking attendants of the world have already conveyed to me, I do things of stupendous, mind-boggling stupidity – feats which cause others’ minds to reel with incredulity. So my avoidance of motorcycles is a considerate move designed to protect others from peril, since in my extreme awkwardness and clumsiness, even just as a passenger, I would perchance do something to cause us to crash.
I have also missed out on a countless number of promising dates by being unable to get up my courage to drive (a car) to a particularly challenging (for me) location.
It was a tremendous struggle for me to ever learn to drive a car at all, let alone a motorcycle. Everything about driving as a sensory experience was overwhelming and nearly impossible for me to overcome. When I was 16, it took months of just approaching a car and touching the door, then walking away, or climbing into the driver’s seat and just sitting there for a while, then going back in the house, to ever get up my courage enough to start it, let alone to cause it to move down a road.
But, after very much persistence, I gradually achieved an uneasy but somewhat bearable ability to convey myself from here to there. Then, after spending four years in New York City, during which time I didn’t drive at all since the need didn’t exist, upon my return to the Midwest I found to my tremendous discouragement and dismay that I had to start over completely from scratch – that I had essentially forgotten how to drive, that it was every bit as intimidating as it had been when I was 16, and that I had to learn how to do it all over again as well as overcome the same set of original anxieties.
Apparently, it is possible to forget how to “ride a bike” -- something that I never did learn how to do (and never will now) since I lacked the coordination as well as the social interaction that might have inspired me to keep trying until I succeeded.
So yes, challenges with manners of conveyance have been no small factor in the circumscribed nature of my life. I was not really designed to ever leave my house. But in the present day, work demands that I do.
So did going to college. When I started commuting to school, first to IUPUC and then to IUPUI (and by that time I was well into my 20s), I had to practice the route numerous times with someone else along, making sure that I knew of a predetermined and guaranteed parking lot or parking garage – an absolutely definite destination so that I could have all lanes, all turns and so on memorized down to the exact parking space.
My anxiety about driving only in very small degree involves fear of getting in an accident. Certainly, that’s part of it. But mainly, it’s that I get overwhelmed in certain situations – confused. It’s the uncertainty, the panic, the seeming lack of control in certain situations, of getting lost, of not knowing where I am or which way to go. Driving is the only situation in life which has given me consistent panic attacks.
I am proud to say, though, that through years of sheer determination and practice, I am a competent driver – probably even a good one. This may be precisely because I’ve had to struggle so much with it. I am excellent at comprehending my own limitations, and I tend to have to overthink everything. (Somehow, I think this is preferable to hurtling down the road completely thoughtless and brainless, which appears to be a much more common phenomenon.) I tend to perceive driving as a grand pattern, almost like a chess game, and I am constantly thinking many miles and moves ahead. If speeding or passing someone is illogical (because I can perceive that it will not actually take me to my destination any faster), I don’t do it. I never tailgate; there is definitely never any logical reason for that. I consistently drive somewhat over the speed limit since going with the flow of traffic is the safest move, but I never speed unduly or dangerously. I have never in my entire life been pulled over, and have never had a single ticket or citation. (Perhaps that is at least a somewhat remarkable fact; I once had a student still in her early twenties say she had been pulled over between 10 and 20 times.) In my adult life, I’ve never had an accident, except one that totaled my car, but for which I was not at fault and could not have prevented through any degree of defensive driving.
In my world, everything about driving must be safe, logical, and involve thinking about my own safety as well as others. I am a sort of caretaker of others on the road. If anything, I am overly concerned about the other drivers around me, looking to see if someone needs to be let into a lane, or, if I see that someone is about to make a potentially dangerous move or mistake, trying accordingly to make adjustment that will ensure their safety. I would argue that it should not be my job to do this – that others should be able to think for themselves and see to their own safety. But typically, on any given drive, I seem to find myself thinking for a large number of other individuals on the road.
Doubtless this consideration for others has little to do with any sort of saintliness on my part, but is attributable to the fact that I have to struggle with everything so much myself, causing me to be more aware of others around me and their potential struggles. I have to think deeply and carefully about everything, and so driving and everyone around me is included in that.
Other than a few parking woes here and there, what seems to annoy others most about my driving is my over-cautiousness in certain situations. I am aware that I am not always the best judge of speed and distance, and so occasionally at a stop sign I fail to pull out when I would actually have had plenty of time; I err on the side of caution. This can greatly annoy the person behind you. Generally if someone is angry with me, it is for being too slow – not for driving too slow, but for failing to turn out quickly enough. I get a lot of horns blared at me, which I take very personally. I go home tucked in fetal position haunted by the blaring of horns.
On the other hand, I’m the fastest person I’ve ever encountered at going once a light has turned green in an intersection. For others, there seems to be some sort of delay for which I don’t quite have an explanation. On my part, the split second it turns green, provided the intersection is safe and clear, I’m long gone, while others appear to be slowly…I don’t know. I have no idea what they’re doing – waking up from a nap? Zipping their pants back up? Completing a Mad Lib? Of course, it is possible that the reason for this delay is that everyone else is on their devices while they’re stopped at intersections, consorting happily in the hive, in the constant social buzz which others exist in and I do not. Unencumbered by devices or conversations, when the light turns green, I’m long gone. Eat my dust.
GPS has been the greatest blessing for me (thank you military-industrial complex for releasing it for civilian use, and more specifically, to me, one who no doubt you would have nothing but contempt for were you to know of my existence and that your technology had fallen into my nervous, fumbling hands). With GPS, I at least know that I will make it into the general vicinity of my destination. Even if I cannot figure out any way to park, or I take a wrong turn, the device will get me back on track. I would have to credit GPS as being the sole reason I am able to drive at all in the present day.
Still, there are limits, and those limits are permanent. I can drive straight down a highway or interstate easily enough (I don’t like being on an interstate one bit, but I will do it), and I can drive within small towns or certain suburban areas where traffic patterns are light and relatively predictable. But I cannot and never will be able to drive in cities. This is quite unfortunate for me since cities are the loci of all productive social activity on this planet. The grief I feel at being unable to experience cities is one of the keenest of my life.
Being for all intents and purposes exiled from cities is one of the main factors that curtails meeting people. I have tried to be as creative as possible over the years, designating locations to meet dates that were places I knew I could handle – “half way” points in suburban areas. But a lot of men aren’t really willing to go to that much trouble. For those that are, it works temporarily – it’s a kind of band-aid or stop-gap solution. Eventually, unless you can reach a city on your own steam, what I’ve learned is that no one is going to bother to mess with you.
In Raleigh, I tried using the public transportation system to get me to some reaches of the city that were otherwise too intimating for me. But one trouble with public transportation is that it is so confounded slow. You waste so much time sitting around to get somewhere that after a time it doesn’t seem worth the bother, and so you decide to just stay home in your apartment. Taxis would be a nice solution, but are prohibitively expensive.
Another strategy I’ve employed over the years is to only visit places at “off-times” in order to avoid the high volumes of traffic that overwhelm me so completely. This includes stores, restaurants, theme parks, tourist towns. But there again, when you visit places only when no one else is around, that doesn’t take you very far toward interaction with others.
Within my circumscribed bounds, I have grown somewhat comfortable driving, and even enjoy it under certain circumstances. Teaching bajillions of sections of college courses every semester for multiple different institutions of higher learning has taught me that the car is a place that no one can reach me. Driving along a familiar highway in the midst of a familiar commute with your phone turned off is temporary peace. No student can explain to me why her paper is late or why she can’t figure out APA formatting and citation. The worst thing that happens during a peaceful drive is that ideas for your book won’t stop coming to you, and you can’t keep them all in your head and you forget some of them before being able to get them all written down at your destination. (A student once asked me why I don’t use some sort of voice recorder to take down ideas while I’m driving; this is because I detest the sound of my own voice so completely. I tried this years ago, and I lost faith in and was instantly horrified by any idea that I heard stated back to me in my own recorded voice; any idea captured in that medium became anathema. So I just have to take my chances with forgetting them instead.)
My dream from the time I was very young and exceedingly romantic was always to have a partner to take me places – someone bold and charming who didn’t mind driving in and navigating the real world. This fairytale prince would whisk me away to magical lands that have been shut off to me my entire life. I would get to explore cities and exotic far-off realms – with his hand in mine, and his special verve and competence, I would get to experience that very distinctive surge of excitement and joy that accompanies being in gatherings of people when all is good and right with the human race. Even if I couldn’t take part, I could feel a part of it. I would never have become shut off and bitter.
Such lovely dreams. As already pointed out, it’s a vicious circle. If you can’t get anywhere to begin with, then you don’t meet anyone. No prince is coming for you.
Some people are lucky enough to have a partner or help-mate or even just a friend in their life who does most of the driving. But I’ve never had any alternative but to put on my big girl pants and deal. What I do is either drive where I need to drive (ain’t no one else gonna do it), or if I just can’t possibly bring myself to face it, I have to try to come up with an alternative creative solution. I do think that being forced to deal with my challenges has made me a stronger and more creative person. That I ever achieved a relative degree of competence and comfort with driving is really pretty miraculous, and at times, I have discovered that by pushing myself I was able to do far more than I thought I could do. However, by this point in my life, I’ve pushed myself to my limitations. I know my precise boundaries and I know what I can do and what I simply cannot. But this is also valuable to know. To know your limitations is to know how to approach problem-solving in your life. It dictates a course of action.
Every time I ever leave the house and have to get between the wheel, without exception, I’m always petrified. This has never changed. It takes a great mustering of willpower for me to ever make it out of my house, out of the driveway, and to any destination.
My first choice would have been to get whisked off on magical adventures in the world with a partner adept at transportation, and with his benign help to spend all kinds of time in cities and other magical places, right in the thick of it all. If this had happened for me, that person would have been the greatest hero ever to have appeared in my life. But without that mythical beast, I’m forced to my own devices, which seem to involve pissing the world off and getting in its way. If I could stay stuffed away inside my house and never leave, I absolutely would at this point. But I have to get to work, people. Just like everyone else.
On the other hand, all kinds of important, fascinating, highly competent, brilliant individuals out there on the road – completely insensible to my particular struggles – would probably be lost without me to curse at. And on my part, I had long suspected that I existed only to be either invisible or a pain in the ass to people more important and interesting than me, and driving has been the one thing that gave me 100% confirmation of it. At least I have no longer to wonder.
Police officers, secret service, President of the United States, motorcyclists, parking lot attendants, Judge, members of the jury, so sorry, but with no other choice on my hands, I will be continuing to annoy you within the foreseeable future.
With a Dog on a Hillside
Story, Indiana
“Summer has circled around again, and with it one of my favorite quotes always comes back into mind: "Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace."
— Milan Kundera
Standing brookside in rural, isolated Story, Indiana, on as perfect a spring afternoon as any that has ever existed, I told my friend Rob Stilwell that if I could have a remote place of my own with such a brook, I would never, ever leave. Not for anything. We were there for lunch at the old Inn’s restaurant, and so this property was certainly far from belonging to me. It was just one more beautiful view that I had to leave behind for the rest of the public to enjoy.
He responded, “Yes, but wouldn’t you want a few well-chosen companions?”
And I assented, very honestly, that I would. I’m a recluse; not a hermit. I yearn for a companion all the time.
But isn’t this precisely the trouble – the word “well-chosen”? We don’t get to choose a companion. Not really. Multiple times throughout my life I have chosen companions, but they did not choose me. Conversely, others have chosen me as a companion, but I did not choose them. At other times, even if we mutually chose, the bond was broken far too soon. Or we chose one another for different roles, different purposes, which could not be reconciled. There are never any real reasons for all of this, other than that humans are deeply complicated animals. Also, life puts obstacles in our way that act as fate. Differences in age and distance and obligations all prevent companionship at times.
After Story, at home that evening – an evening as glorious as the afternoon had been – I thought of Milan Kundera’s words, and of my dog, who was with me in that moment. I happen to live on a hillside. It is in borrowed space, though. Most of my life is borrowed currently.
I sat in the backyard, drinking wine, staring beyond the trees and the stately houses down the lane far over the hill into the distance where Highway 50 turns east out of town. When I was a child I used to stand in the very spot I often stand now and would gaze intently out in that direction, dreaming big dreams of leaving home, meeting exciting people, living in vast, far-off cities, loving and being loved.
Small towns are always called “quiet,” but the experience of this is more interesting than the word belies. When I lived in a removed apartment complex beside a park in Raleigh, I had thought it was “quiet.” But in metro areas, the noise works its way into your head and even into your soul. After some time you’re not aware of that constant hum. When I had to move back here to North Vernon, I realized that Raleigh had never been quiet – that this was quiet. It was the first time I had ever really heard the quiet. I’m not sure why – you would think that I would have first noticed the contrast after returning home from living in New York in my early 20s. But, no. I didn’t really hear the quiet until my late 30s. It was unsettling. One does hear dogs barking off in the distance around town, a melancholy sound because it is so removed – you can’t find the dog and reach down to pet him. In spring and summer, there are many songbirds, spring peepers, and the hum of crickets which is, for whatever reason, always so bittersweet. There is also the distant sound of traffic on Highway 50 and the closer sound of traffic on Highways 3 and 7. This sound is haunting, though, not comforting. Rather than being the sound of bustling economic and social activity of a robust city, this is the sound of people moving off to distant places, better places. It is the sound that haunted me as a child when I wanted to join the flow of Highway 50 off to some better fate.
Yet it is with these sights and sounds around me on golden summer days with my dog when I wonder why I ever wish to leave this town. There is really nothing that I need anywhere else in the world. In many ways, I’m well suited for small town life. I don’t like or need excitement or noise.
But I do know very well the reason I have felt compelled to leave this place over and over again. It has been to try to find a partner. Always. I have gone on great expeditions out into the world at tremendous cost, taken part in odysseys over wide swaths of land and water and mountain to find a companion to spend my life with. I’ve driven thousands of miles, moved again and again to different parts of the country, given up months and years of my life to the search, gone bankrupt, exhausted every avenue. The main reason I made the decision to go to grad school was because it would take me to a different area of the country to try to find a partner. In all of the adventures I ever took, whether to New York or Raleigh or Chicago or the southwest, I really expected some sort of Austen-esque fate for myself. I really did. And then always found myself back here, alone and reclusive as always - though always with a dog.
The trouble with humans is that there is no control factor whatsoever. It doesn’t matter how hard you try, how much you care, how much time or money or energy you invest. It doesn’t matter whether you give up or if you don’t ever give up. There is no guarantee that you will ever find companionship or love.
And, at last, this is part of what makes dogs extraordinary and why my heart fills with gratitude even to think of them. This is why they are saints on earth and make life worth living. If you choose, the dog will choose you back. If you have the few dollars needed to adopt him, he will come home with you, and the two of you will take care of each other, and you will have a strong bond that is not subject to the vagaries of bonds between humans. Nothing will break it unless you let it.
With dogs, we have to know ourselves. I know that I want to adopt a slightly older dog from a rescue organization. I definitely do not want a puppy. I’m terrible at training, and that’s important to take into account. This and other factors also dictate that a smaller dog is good for me, rather than a larger dog I might fail to control.
I have had my little dog snarl or snap at people, but I will side with my dog in any dispute like this and let the human leave the premises if he or she prefers. My dog is loyal to me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and provides a continual supply of love on that same schedule. Humans are incapable of this. I know, because unfortunately, I am one.
Also, humans, often through no fault of their own, are crazy. Dogs usually are not. They are remarkable touchstones of sanity and normality.
Beyond being the ideal friends, and thus very inhuman in that sense, dogs are very human. One has to know a dog. He has his own preferences and quirks, his likes and dislikes, his own personality and temperament. He will pick on cats and develop a strange obsession with the mailman. This must be respected. Just like a human, he will snap or growl if his needs and boundaries are not understood and honored.
With great shame, I admit that as a child, I did not like dogs. I thought they were loud, ugly, smelly and gross. In fact, a dog is loud, ugly, smelly, and gross, but what I came to understand later is that he has many positive attributes that more than make up for this, and that his perfections and imperfections taken together make him beautiful. As a child, I was not yet mature enough to understand this. Humans are also loud, ugly, smelly, and gross, and while still beautiful, have fewer positive attributes to redeem them than the dog does.
Though we usually conceptualize the dog as the extrovert he is, I often think that dogs must be on this earth to bring consolation and companionship to shy, reclusive people. A dog, extroverted as he is, is full of interest and compassion for the shy. Certainly he is often the only or last one in your corner – the one who is with you through all of your deepest despair and who remains your touchstone to life and the world. He will want you to go for a walk with him and he will be able to remind you how beautiful everything can be – how much joy there is in simple things.
Though as with everything in this world, there are times when something can go awry with a dog, in general, there is a guarantee of love and companionship between you. Of course, like humans, dogs can under certain circumstances be awful and cruel – can kill or hurt other dogs, other creatures, or even humans. That’s the nature of most life on this planet.
However, if you treat a dog with all the honor and respect that you do a human, you will rarely have any problems. On my part, I try to treat dogs with greater honor and respect than I do humans. But that’s only my choice. I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I’m closer to animals than I am to people.
When a human and a dog endeavor to bring out the best in each other, this is just about the best arrangement that exists in this world – the best we ever are or have the potential to be. I would argue that it is as good, or better than, when two humans endeavor to bring out the best in each other – that the arrangement with the dog is far more likely to see itself out completely to a good end, with honor and friendly feelings.
But even a good end will break you. In fact, a good end is what breaks you the most. Many have observed that the best things in this world are designed to leave us too soon. When a good dog dies, it is like the passing of a saint. I have actually wished at times that I would die before one of my dogs, because the pain of loss is so intense. The love with a dog is as pure as anything we will ever attain, and so the pain over its loss is equally pure – almost unbearable.
But we find these little islands of tranquility – the hillsides on glorious afternoons – in between the pains of loss. One day will come the pain that will take us out, too, and there is no sense hastening it. There will always be at least some of the hillsides until then, as well as many good walks.
I lost a dog just as I was finishing up my last semester of undergrad. He became very suddenly and intensely ill with acute pancreatitis, and over the span of only six hours descended from perfect health to death. During the first few hours of his illness, I was working on some chapters of a useless novel that was part of my senior project. As typical humans, that professor and I brought out the worst in each other, and the chapters are unusable trash – no part of them able even to be recycled into another project. I’ve always felt it to be one of many terrible jokes of a vengeful god that I was working on these hollow, senseless pages when a very part of my heart dropped dead.
But even when the best companion you will ever have is already right by your side, you must associate with your own kind. It was recently put to me that a man had said that he was happy his wife had left him – that all he needed was his land and his dog. While I can agree with this on some level, I wonder how long such a sentiment can really last.
With human companions, I have had both experiences – complete desolation, as well as periods with the close contact of a friendship or relationship. I can say that it is always better to have people in your life than not – no matter how contentious or difficult or painful. Not only is communion and expression simply nobler and better than nothingness, but I can say with authority that the pain of loss is far less painful than the pain of loneliness – the pain of “void.” Acute pain is terrible, but passes; chronic pain is like the unrelenting power of attrition, and will break you completely.
I said earlier that a partner was something I always greatly needed. I can say that lacking one all these years, I now, without any doubt, have become the worst version of myself. The remarkable thing is that a dog doesn’t care. Even as the worst version of myself, he accepts and forgives me completely.
The search for a partner, though still wanted, seems less and less worth the energy. I don’t know how many more odysseys I can get up either the energy or the resources for in upcoming years. I’ve spent up everything I have. I’ve been on many long journeys, and I’m exhausted.
In the first draft of Muller’s Mile, in my infinite foolishness, I gave the place a Mediterranean climate. Later I asked myself what I was doing, reaching beyond myself to things I don’t know and probably never will know. I’ve never even visited, let alone lived in such a place. I replaced that climate with southern Indiana, which is the climate my soul knows. I am not a nature writer and description is one of my greatest weaknesses, and I decided that if I at least wrote what I have always known, maybe it would somehow populate the pages with a familiarity, a warmth, a comfort. This river country is what I’m from. As the years pass, I acknowledge that to walk out into the woods along the Muscatatuck River with my dog is the closest to anything like peace or happiness that I may ever experience. There are far worse fates than sitting with a dog on a quiet hillside, and there is no better companion for a recluse than a dog.
Dogs are the meaning of life. Nothing can start, or continue, or finish, without one. This is my version of invoking the muses; dogs are my muses. With a dog, I wish to live like a monk and write.
