I don’t drive. (For now.)
I mean, technically I can – I’m just not licensed. My failed road test happened during a time of tumult in my life. And I haven’t been behind the wheel in three and a half years.
As a 22-year-old who grew up in the car-centric United States – where your car is seen by some as more of a marker of adulthood than cooking for yourself, keeping a clean home, or managing your time – this might seem a bit unusual.
Most of the time, I didn’t think much of this fact. “A lot happened and it’s not like I need to drive right now, anyway.” But lately – amidst other things – I began to feel bad about it. Not driving hit my self-esteem – I felt childish, incompetent, and trapped. I dwelled on it. Even after arranging a refresher course this summer, I was convinced I was some sort of idiot. It doesn’t help that my extended South African family, from a country where anyone who can afford it gets their license *like that*, made comment after comment implying I was some sort of impractical bookworm. Friends from back home – New York’s suburbia – made similar comments. (Not to mention that as a gay man I get to be told I’m too delicate for X, Y, Z over and over and over.) I stopped bringing it up, because nothing made me feel better.
But then I realized something: not driving made me grow up, and it made me a better Jew.
Firstly, it taught me to be patient. I had to learn to wait – something I as a child was particularly awful at. I have had to wait for buses and trains, for rides, and for it to stop raining. I also had to be patient in getting places – since walking or transit mean that it’s not exactly “five minutes down the interstate” for this young man. And this becoming patient made me a better Jew. Patience, after all, is one of the highest Jewish values – it is praised as a sign of the fear of God and reverence for the Torah in our writings, and rabbis ascribe the virtue to the Biblical patriarchs. The Talmud teaches that to become patient is something that all Jews should aspire to. Not driving helped me get a bit closer.
It also taught me to plan well. Since I don’t have the ability to hop in a car at leisure when I want to go somewhere, I rely on public transit – and so much of my life revolves around transit schedules. When there’s a bus every 45 minutes in your New York suburb where “everyone drives,” you need to be able to plan well to not have your social life go to pieces. This skill is pretty important to deal with the various obligations and necessities of Jewish life. Firstly, if you’re going to observe Shabbat or plan anything for it, you need to plan around sunset times and Shabbat restrictions – even if you only observe some. Then there’s our absurd and ever-changing lunar calendar. Planning well has made it easier for me to do more in the Jewish community – and become more traditionally observant.
In many ways, not driving has also taught me about kheyn – grace. Some of this learning has come from my own needs: one cannot get rides if one is rude, nor can one manage well on transit if one is always angry. More of this learning, however, has come from a need to offset rude comments that people make. In a country where it is assumed all competent adults can drive, it is easy to make the non-driver feel bad, or like a child, or incompetent. I had to gain the chayn to handle the occasional insults and nasty comments with grace. It does not behoove me, as a Jew or human, to sink to the level of petty insults. And who said that I’m not an adult because I can’t legally pilot a large chunk of metal down an asphalt path? Not driving gave me the strength to look beyond images.
Will I get my license? That’s the plan this summer. It’s admittedly useful to have, and I’d like to rent a car to go to places for hiking now and again.
But will I remember what this way of doing things taught me? Be’ezrat Hashem.
Jonathan P. Katz is a student at the University of Chicago.
