Response or Mastery (Vanlife)
This is a small case in point:1
I’m camped at 8,500’, in the van I converted from cargo to camper van. Nights are cool, and days are sunny and warm.
When I woke at 5:30, it was 53F inside; the sun didn’t rise above the mountain and tree tops until after 8. In a house I’d have nudged up the heat; in the van I grabbed shawls and a blanket. This afternoon it will be 90 in here. In a house I’d turn on the AC. In the van, I’ll drink some electrolytes and “tune” the curtains and windows.
Same body, same mind, same temperatures. Different approach. In the van, changing conditions, even extremes, are the norm. I take them in stride. When I can’t, I move.
I’m in a phase where my framework for understanding the world is being upended. At heart the change is fairly simple—a switch from thinking of the world as stable and fixed and the self as consistent, to seeing change, transience, and process as more deeply fundamental. In a world in process, response is more effective—and more possible—than mastery.
The van is a place of response. A house is (in theory) a place of mastery and control—you shape the environment. I’m certainly more comfortable in a house. But I’m much more at home in my van. I believe mastery is provisional and possibly illusory, contingent on lots of circumstances beyond our control. It is certainly temporary. Disability showed me that in my house: I physically could no longer master it. I think I feel more at home in the van because it makes contingency overt, maybe even honest.
This phase seems less about learning something new than about unearthing behaviors and attitudes I already had and shedding the cultural framework that made me doubt my own observations.
It’s not that I think nothing is fixed. I’m grateful that 2 + 2 =4 every time I balance my bank account. But alongside what is fixed, there is flux. The world is changing. The universe changes. Bodies and personalities and life circumstances change. Change invites response.
Response is in some ways a relationship of reciprocity. Mastery is a relationship of dominance. Skill is required for both. To me the question is whether the skills I practice every day allow me to encounter the world as I actually think it exists—even if that means I don’t live in my culture particularly well.
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In The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker shows how even the tiniest decisions of daily life lay the groundwork for philosophical inquiry. Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Confucius stressed the importance of rituals in trying on “as-if” situations.↩