Goodbye Comfort, Hello Adventure

I sold my car yesterday, an event that triggered mixed feelings. While I am relieved to be free to finally hit the road, I am sad to part with the vehicle that has been my closest companion for the past couple years. It was such an integral part of my life here in LA. This is the car that I will tell my kids about one day, that first little sportscar that I bought and I drove on my own.



That being said, I take comfort in my decision knowing that I am saying farewell not only to a car but to a way of life that our generation is realizing we must all leave behind. Since I've been packing up my belongings, I've become aware of how much stuff I've bought in the past few years that I absolutely don't need. Oblivious, I've allowed myself to be carried away by the perverse aspect of American consumer culture that brainwashes us with the entertainment and advertisements to buy, and buy, and buy, insulated in our comfortable daily routine from the toxic economic machines that are ravaging the Earth, tearing away its resources, and spewing out cancerous synthetic chemicals that are killing all forms of life on the planet. The automobile is the golden standard of this excessively wasteful and harmful way of life that is epitomized in the traffic jammed, exhaust fuming freeways of LA.



The night before I sold my car, I watched this film called HOME, which captures in epic fashion the rampant destruction of the Earth that is caused by industrialization. It stunned me to see how similar the scarred and burned landscapes of our planet resemble the surface of the human body when it is injured—unmistakable proof that we are all interconnected, and that the Earth, like us, is a living organism whose health is rapidly declining as the human population increases and continues its industrial era ways. The film was just the motivation I needed to let go of my car and embrace a new lifestyle that contributes to the preservation of nature, not it's destruction.