Auto-Freedom.
Lately I've become acutely aware of how wonderful it feels to be automobile-free. I bicycle a lot, but I also walk and use public transit a fair amount. I now see my automobile for the crutch that it was, and I am grateful to be free of the unnecessary encumbrance. I think I have always envied a life free of physical attachment, but I've only been conscious of myself heading toward that ideal in the past year. In retrospect I am certain that eliminating my automobile addiction was fundamental to this revelation. And I believe it was directly responsible for my discovery of things within myself that, for the first time ever, feel like "me." Perhaps relieving my mind of the stresses associated with object ownership freed it to ply further inward. Or perhaps I'm just a nomad at heart.
This attitude extends beyond transportation, and it occurred to me recently how thrifty my life has become aside from mobility. I have one recliner chair that I purchased new, and it's a decade old. Everything else -- chair, desk, bed, shelves, dresser, television, vcr, dvd player, kitchen appliances, most of my clothes, and more -- are either freebies or yard-sale finds. Unless my bikes were inside, my house could burn down and I wouldn't lose anything that would break my heart. I've been both a homeowner and an automobile owner, and it's a HUGE relief to me to be otherwise now.
I didn't notice changes in my self-awareness in the first year of being car-free, or even the first two years. The automobile addiction itself wasn't the full issue, it turns out. My car was more than a tool of transportation. It was a possession which, like a membership card, preserved my place in a culture of imprisonment carefully disguised as freedom. My addiction was a fundamental part of that disguise, and it may even have been the glue that held together the prison. But it was also merely the tip of an iceberg. It made many other things seems desirable which, seen with clearer eyes, are at best foolish, and at worst downright sinister.
I use the term addiction without apology here, and with a full realization that it will rub many, if not most, automobile drivers the wrong way. I didn't love my car in the way that some people join auto clubs and meet up with others who drive the same model. I didn't drive everywhere when I had the car, and rode my bike and walked sometimes. But the car was always a part of my psyche, and was always factored into every decision I made. It's tempting now, as it was then, to consider the presence of the car to be a convenience. It's only in my recent self-awareness that I see it for it was: a crutch to my existence. It made it possible for me to ignore the path by assuming the destination. It took away from every movement the joy of the actual movement.
