(This is Chapter Three in my “Thoughts on Van Life” series of posts, in which I discuss that every upside of van living carries a defined downside. Check out Chapter One and Chapter Two if you haven’t already).
UPSIDE AND DOWNSIDE: CULTURES FAR DIFFERENT THAN YOUR OWN
Upside— You have time to explore cultures outside of– even contrary to– your own
Most adults who work various jobs have limited time-off to travel for leisure, so they have to naturally constrain their choices. Most of the time, that means narrowing potential destinations via criteria around one’s likes: selecting things well-aligned with one’s interests, or things a partner will love, or experiences a trusted friend recommended— but this doesn’t always leave room for the kind of exposure to differing viewpoints that can define different communities around the U.S.
Think about it— how often do you use limited time and space away from work to go to see places and spaces you don’t actually want to spend time in? I often tell people that in the van, I have learned more from forcing myself to go to the places I have NOT particularly wanted to go, than the places I HAVE wanted to go.
Culture isn’t something we can assess from the top destinations of any state— you wouldn’t claim to understand Florida based on Disneyland, nor feel versed in Wyoming because you’d been to Devil’s Tower. Making the effort to get beyond the sites and see the people is something we all do when traveling— but it also often takes time we don’t always have the luxury of.
Luckily, time isn’t an issue in the van, it’s just a matter of will— and it DOES require will to walk straight into a ‘discomfort’ zone.
I tried to do this in the past two years, taking on my own beliefs and assumptions, and purposely heading to talk with the people in the places that oppose those views.
Let me explain that by giving a few examples.
- Despite being a pacifist who supports assault rifle bans, I attended a gun show in a small town in Mississippi, since gun shows are a uniquely American way to purchase firearms, and found a community of people as united by their political philosophies as their interest in weaponry (but who were kind and helpful when answering my questions)
- Not a ‘bird person’ at all, I took a recommendation from someone to see an obscure wildlife refuge to view a species of bird I’d never heard of until 5 minutes prior, and was immersed in “bird people” who couldn’t wait to tell me more about each species
- I believe in the work of the CDC, but when visiting Arkansas, I was in a small town and rode out a tornado in a flimsy trailer park bathroom stall with my dog, and a nurse who shared proudly that she was unvaccinated for Covid, and I did listen to her point-of-view about why she made this (in my mind, suspect) choice
- Someone who considers myself a person who cares about animal welfare, I went to a rodeo and watched events in which the animals endure a little more stress than I would have preferred to see— super-chagrined where others were delighted— because the culture of Texas was imbued with rodeo since before it was a state
- I might be an environmentalist, but I deliberately passed through Odessa and smelled the heavy stench of oil, a thick putrid smell in the nostrils that quickly was ‘adjusted’ to, wondering about the particulates and waste headed into lungs and the atmosphere— if I was going to keep gassing up my van, I knew I ought to see the place, and hear from the people, who created that fuel that filled my tank (a couple oilmen told me they truly believed that oil was a gift from God himself)
Some of these were deliberate selections, some were momentary decisions, some were just frankly, signs I saw on the road from a point ‘A’ to a point ‘B.’ Many of these stops stemmed from an effort to understand a place at is cultural root, spending time in spaces in which the ideology did NOT match mine, which is healthy to do (though it is not always easy).
In the end, it helps to either affirm my perceptions or move them closer to refinement.
ESPECIALLY when it was difficult, or didn’t align with my political point-of-view, or exposed me to sadness I simply could have avoided if I didn’t decide to spend time in discomfort.
So, yeah, I’ve stopped at a lot of places with opposing views to mine, challenging myself to head toward that which I don’t align with. And while that’s not the most comfortable part of my travel, it often corresponds with the most growth in perceptive that I experience.
Lest this come across as brave and sanctimonious too, I did once find a limit based on my own psychological and physical safety– I did not attend a Trump rally despite only being a few hours’ drive away at one point. I have talked to plenty of very right-wing folks in my time out here on the road– but the fervency of those rallies just felt like a foment. And so, I didn’t go.
In some ways, I still feel like that choice was a failure of will on my part. BUT…
Downside— Going outside of one’s comfort zone can mean serious cognitive dissonance
Challenging your own perceptions can be downright healthy to do sometimes. In larger doses, it can be difficult to bear— causing a rising anxiety that can make the world feel overwhelming, or even cruel, sick, and sad.
Cognitive dissonance is defined as the inability to hold contradicting evidence in one’s brain without increasing stress on the mind and body— and boy, there’s plenty of dissonance to be found in the stops I make in which I don’t agree with the philosophy or culture of the place.
It can take a mental toll. A few examples—
- I went to the “Focus on the Family” visitors center to see what this patriarchal religious organization (that is diametrically opposed to queerness) might tell of this story to guests, despite being queer and feeling slight fear just existing in the building
- I visited many small town diners (just like those ones reporters go to on election years), and saw fading communities that were grappling with the inability to exist amid economic flight, and overheard vitriolic things said about women, immigrants, and people of color
- I spent time at the Creation Museum, a scientifically-bonkers-bizarro-world which posits that human beings and dinosaurs co-existed in an effort to take the Bible literally, a 4-hour experience which so twisted my brain that I needed a day or two to decompress
- Hardly a fan of nuclear weapons, I visited a museum entirely devoted to the history of them, and saw ‘fans’ of weaponry and war taking photos with replica bombs and missiles, while I thought mostly of the (unmentioned) Japanese civilian victims in Nagasaki and Hiroshima
- I have passed by more CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) than I would care to count— huge feedlots that stretched for miles and smelled for miles, too— with cows confined and barely able to move (except to feed at grain troths, of course). I tried to stop at one, but this involved getting chased out by a pickup bearing a security decal
These were incredibly uncomfortable things to do, hear, and see— and despite their being real value in them, the toll is also real and cumulative. There’s pain in discomfort, there’s outright anxiety and rage that can come from experiencing things you find to be distasteful, ugly, hateful toward others, or opinions that might be abhorrent in your eyes— but it would also be willfully ignorant to glide through van living by seeking out Instagrammable view after Instagrammable view, closing my eyes in favor of the ‘coolest’ places and spaces.
I decided when I was out here on the road to not just “see” America’s great sights, but to really SEE it inside and out. And while this is a choice I’ve made — and I’m not asking at all for anyone to feel bad for me for making it, the contradictions of America are not easy on the brain and heart, by any means.
Especially when taken in day after day, week after week, going on two years. As the kids in Gen Z might say, “It’s been a lot”– and I’m still processing many of the difficult things I’ve run headlong into.
Posted by Sun
