“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.” Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars IV: A New Hope
With Dad Windu off at a conference, my Padawan Learner and I have the car available to us 24/7. This is highly unusual and it’s been remarkably tempting to jump in it to do our usual activities, any and all necessary errands and more than a few unnecessary Wouldn’t it be fun to… ? things that we rarely do because they entail the use of a daytime car that we don’t have or extended, multiple bus transfers. The temptation is really quite amazing. Normally, we don’t miss having a car but suddenly now that it’s RIGHT THERE, we have almost a compulsion to go everywhere in the blasted thing. It’s provided us with some really good discussions on why people get into the habit of driving, about the basic human tendency to avoid exerting extra effort and even Newton’s three laws of motion.
We have done a few of the fun out-of-the-ordinary things, things that we save up for days like these, but yes, we have also failed to live up to all of our daily routines and some of our own live lightly ideals these past couple of days. For example, I drove to buy doughnuts – of all things! – for breakfast yesterday, instead of walking the 1.5 miles (roundtrip), but we’re also being honest with ourselves and trying to fight the urge to think of it as a “vacation” from responsibile living.
