Home on the Range?

Photo from http://tinyhouseblog.com/

Rainy evening - wet streets. Everyone rushing to get somewhere on a Friday night. Myself included.

Made it home to numb my brain with some SVU and cat cuddles. Sometimes a mind just needs to be mindless in order to rest. While surfing Facebook, where I read an article about a Google employee who is saving all of his income by sleeping in a truck that he parks in the company lot, I thought about the things I call my life. It's interesting how we define ourselves through our dwellings. A colleague of mine recently purchased a new condo, and she's spending a lot of money decorating it. It's a way of self -definition - how we decorate our homes, what we decide to furnish it with, the neighborhood we decide to live in. Somewhere, in the back of everyone's mind, is the all American dream. A home of one's own, where one can express oneself through stylish displays.

Yet somewhere in this American dream lies a catch. You must pay for your self definition by working at a job, which often takes you away form your stylish home. You may have to commute two hours a day and sit at a desk or stand in a room for eight hours. The remaining fourteen hours (of which eight you are sleeping) affords you a bit of leisure time with which you can enjoy your surroundings. Basically you slave away to collapse in your stylish apartment for about four hours before you pass out from exhaustion.

So I think this Google employee has the right idea. Why not save all of his money and pay off his student loans? Why not save up enough money to buy a home someday when he can actually be at home to enjoy his hard earned purchase? What is the point of spending money renting a small room in which he only spends time sleeping?

If all of us lived in mobile homes that could go from place to place, would we be as set upon our identities and properties? Would we be more willing to let go of things that aren't good for us, knowing that we can simply drive away to the next destination? Another town? Another state? And what if we spent less time decorating our homes on wheels and more time experiencing life instead? Wouldn't we be more aware of our aliveness, not having to work and commute 8-10 hours a day just to afford a place to live?

Perhaps the mobile culture will eventually become more mainstream. The recent trend in people building tiny homes on wheels is the beginning of the fraying of the fabric of the all American dream of the white picket fence. What's the point of a fence when you don't want to stay in one place, when you want to get out from the plot of land? A life lived in freedom may be much more valuable than anything money can buy...