Interstate drive-by judgments

The other night I had to go from one side of my town (Bellingham, WA) to the other via the interstate. I tried to observe the scenery dispassionately, as someone who was just passing through and had never seen the town proper. I pretended I was some guy living in Vancouver, BC, but with family in Seattle—someone who would make frequent trips through the area but probably never have any reason to stop off in Bellingham and check it out. 

I found that the view of town from the interstate gave precious little to recommend it. I could see some of the green hillsides on the outskirts, but for the most part I was passing through malls, fast-food strips, car dealerships, and industrial parks. Bellingham is a town that residents and visitors generally like, but the things that make it worth living in—the interesting shops downtown, the trails by the bay, the parks and trees—were far out of sight.

Every town of moderate size has at least one interstate or major highway passing through it, and the areas they pass through are almost always nearly identical. It’s big box retailers and franchises that look like they were built entirely of plastic. When we pass through a town, we’re passing through probably just about the worst part of it, and certainly the least individual. This makes sense—the highway was first built in a relatively undeveloped part of town, then a bunch of crap was built up around it to serve or entice the people driving by.

There are long stretches of highway that I know very well from throughout my childhood.  Along these stretches are many towns I’ve passed through dozens of times without once actually seeing. And a lot of these towns I’ve judged to be boring shitholes. Having passed through them so many times makes me feel entitled to judge them. But now I see that my charming little home looks from the freeway to be as much of a boring shithole as any other of the anonymous towns along I-5.

If all towns look identically boring from our perspective passing through, what else are we missing in our lives? There are familiar people we pass by every day in much the same way we pass through familiar towns. We move fast and in narrowly prescribed paths. And around these paths we build up possibly the worst parts of ourselves, and almost certainly the least interesting. But because of familiarity, we feel entitled to judge these people, and we take little time to reflect on them. It’s just that guy at work John, in the same way that Ellensburg is just that strip of gas stations and burger places on the way back home.