Here’s what I see on a morning walk: Cars parked on the street bumper to bumper, with barely an inch between them. Vehicles with their wheels up on the sidewalk where baby strollers and wheelchairs and assisted-walkers fear to roll.
Vehicles clog the small village where I live, parked along every winding lane, every mountain road, many of them parked askew so that this morning as I walk carefully among them, a driver approaches, weaving through the space that’s left, becoming a skilled participant in the getting-to-work marathon. As more walkers and runners and kids with backpacks join in on their way to school, it becomes a dodgem game.
How did one small town get so full of shiny metal?
Well, here’s a cottage that’s been expanded with its garage “repurposed” and its driveway fenced off. Four vehicles park out front. Here’s new construction – a giant house going up where a cottage once lived. It’s being built fence to fence with no yard, no garage and no driveway. More vehicles join the lineup.
As I wander, I wonder something else. If this house is too big for the block, is it also too big for the times?
I do remember how it got like this. I participated. The thinking was, I’ve worked hard and my home (and sometimes what I drive) are part of my very identity. If I can pay for it, I’m entitled to it.
It’s going to take a whole lot of re-thinking to change that part of our American dream. We’ll need to figure out a new personal definition of success, ways to find gratification in making better choices. And we’re just now beginning to ask the tough questions: Is this home/car necessary? Is it right for the preservation of the larger community?
The biggest personal hurdle is getting past what is our right and moving on to our responsibility. The toughest question is, just because we can, should we?
Ó Anita Garner 2009
‘Nita Faye, as usual you’ve elaborated beautifully on a lifestyle issue we can all relate to.
I think you’ll see the whole reassessment of the American Dream forced upon young families by economic reality. You and I are close enough to the finish line to downsize just for the sake of simplifying lives which have gotten too big to manage. My house and all my worldly possessions are like my desk, cluttered seemingly beyond hope. But young adults and the generations that will follow them have to reassess based on their own needs and abilities.
I can only be responsible for and to myself. I want a smaller house and less stuff. But I don’t have a right to insist everybody else do the same. Do I?
Keep writing. I’ll keep trying to catch up. 😉