The Best Is Yet To Come
July was a rough month for our carfree lifestyle. Lured by the enticements of a change in cars and the great outdoors, we embarked on what turned out to be a 1,600 mile trek through Oregon and California. The trip, however, was not the only reason for our inflated mileage last month. The other culprits were day camps for our kids that necessitated daily car trips to the suburbs. We organized a carpool for one of the camps, but the other half of the pool experienced the untimely demise of their family car and simply drove our car on their appointed days. These camps were, of course, voluntary, and could have been replaced with camps located nearby. We chose to send our kids to these camps because we felt they offered “better” instruction or more neatly fit our schedule than the ones located nearby. These sorts of voluntary activities extend the radius of our daily lives in unpredictable ways, permanently tethering us to the car in a manner the work commute does not. Since starting this site, I’ve met many people with alternative work commutes, including quite a few who have recently tried giving up their car commute. The repetitive trip to the office, often with ties to various forms of public transit, is well-suited to carlessness. On the other hand, I rarely meet anyone who tries to tackle the daily chores of life, like shopping and dropping off the kids at their various activities, without the car. My world touches mainly families with kids, and parents, for the most part, are intimidated or turned off by the logistics of transporting kids (in a timely fashion, no less) without the car.
As a parent, I have some sympathy for this point of view. As blasphemous as this sounds coming from me, devotion to a carfree existence constrains life for families with kids in ways unimaginable to those without kids. Of course it is possible get anywhere without a car, but sometimes getting there saps all of your enthusiasm for your destination. If you are only responsible for yourself or your partner, adding extra minutes to your trip or incorporating a brisk walk or bike ride is no big deal. In fact, it probably makes the journey all the more fun and invigorating. These added elements, however, can be an unpleasant, exhausting burden for parents. And the physical challenges are only one hurdle. As parents, we have difficulty saying “no,” especially for transportation reasons, so if our child has a soccer game or music lesson or even just a birthday party at a location for which the car is the only practical means of transportation, we willingly hop in the car. We want to provide our kids with an array of experiences to make them better people, and not everything we choose for our children happens a few miles or a convenient bus ride from our house. When the decision is a choice between what we believe is best for our kids and demonstrating our commitment a carfree life, our kids usually win out.
The more thoughtful answer to this conundrum is, of course, balance. The occasional car trip for a distant, but high priority activity is exactly the purpose of the car. But we do need to teach ourselves and our children to take advantage of all that our local communities have to offer, sometimes settling for “very good,” when the “best” happens to be located 20 miles away. Finding comfort in accepting less than the best is difficult in our consumption-oriented society. If our dynamic, 21st Century economy produces the “best,” why shouldn’t we have it? The line between what is essential and a luxury has been blurred. This loss of perspective is unwittingly highlighted by an article in yesterday’s New York Times, describing the anxiety of the “working class millionaires” of Silicon Valley. This angst comes not from a fear that they will lose their millions, but that they don’t have enough to keep up with their neighbors. As one of the afflicted said, “You look around, and the pressures to spend more are everywhere.” The article, without a hint of the irony that might offend its similarly anxious readers, summarizes the disease nicely:
Children want the latest fashions their peers are wearing and the most popular high-ticket toys. Furniture does not seem up to snuff once you move into a multimillion-dollar home. Spouses talk, and now that resort in Mexico the family enjoyed so much last winter is not good enough when looking ahead to next year. Summer camp, a full-time housekeeper, vintage wines, country clubs: the cost of living bloats.
This predicament is the slippery slope of always wanting what is best for your family. We excuse any behavior, including workaholic hours and endless driving, in pursuit of the elusive perfect life, ignoring the possiblity that the perfect life may not be the product of a big bank account or fashionable house. The perfect life may just be found in the opposite direction, measured by the fewest hours worked and spent in the car.