Some days, I walk to work. I live just over a mile and a half from my office, and my office wants me there four days a week—rarities for a tech professional post-2020. My route is no bustling big-city stroll, but it has sidewalks and crossing signals the whole way, down a busy thoroughfare and up the industrial drive to my workplace. There are enough trees and grass that it’s pretty, on a brisk winter morning or sunny fall afternoon. And thanks to Michigan’s weather, most days it’s even possible to arrive at work without sweating through my clothes.
Commuting on foot takes effort, though. Not so much physically, thankfully, but it turns out that leaving twenty-five minutes before work when it could be five is embarrassingly difficult. Most nights, I tumble into bed later than I planned, tired enough that an extra twenty minutes of sleep seems more important than reducing my carbon footprint. My car is a cheat code for poor time management; I’m too used to its easy out.
But the mornings when I do manage to allot enough time are special. I set out with my backpack, travel mug in hand, and spend twenty-five minutes absorbing the sights and sounds of my commute. In my car, I move too fast to notice more than a few business signs; on foot, I see the side streets and bus stops and wares in storefront displays. I recognize the mechanics at the Valvoline, the cars at the neighboring apartment complex. I wonder if driving isn’t transportation’s equivalent of scrolling: too much input, too quick to remember more than a fraction of it.
From the sidewalk, I can also see how isolating traveling by car is. The drivers move in packs, but they’re each wrapped in a metal shell—numb to each other, to the wind and the ground and the sound waves, even, of the places they pass through. If I learned anything from Calvin’s Reformed theology, it was that our bodies are just as spiritually significant as our minds. And the experience of walking—of moving across the Earth with only your own body—is a very different spiritual experience from steering yourself down the freeway in a little box.
I don’t mean to knock cars too hard. They let us do good things: find new opportunities, see loved ones far away, get home safely at night, make life accessible when our bodies aren’t up to it. But walking to work has made me realize the importance of connecting with creation, physically and cognitively. It’s important that we cultivate this connection, because it can make any corner of the earth feel like a neighborhood—even the litter and concrete of my commute.
Eleanor Lee (‘23) graduated from Calvin with degrees in computer science and writing. She grew up in South Carolina but currently lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She loves coffee, laughing, and bringing emojis to the workplace.
