On my gone, but never forgotten, Pt. 1
The Bond between Man and Machine
My decision to sell my Canadian-spec Schwarz over Natur 1989 BMW 535iA, my first and by far most cherished car, was as abrupt as it would have previously been unthinkable. In the days immediately before and after, I fell into a trance-like state, as if I was running on autopilot. I did not exactly why I was doing what I was, but I also had a sense that I was doing exactly what I needed to do. Once I took the first step of telling my closest friends, BMW enthusiasts themselves, that I intended to sell the car, and especially after I took the critical step of listing the car for sale, its fate fell into hands of destiny.
Looking back, I realized that everything about this car; buying it, fixing it, driving it, owning it for fourteen years, loving it and selling it, taught me exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. I also found evidence in hindsight for some force outside myself guiding me at every point along this path. This is the first in an essay series which will will explore all that I learned from my first and beloved E34 535i.
Part One
The night after I sold the car, I couldn’t sleep. I kept waking up in a panic and frenzied state, genuinely distraught. Being that I was my childhood bed, surrounded by stuffed animals, I deliriously hugged my teddy bears and stuffed lion, promising I would never abandon them, as I did my first car. This is what a broken attachment looks like.
I’m not sure if we’re supposed to have these types of bonds to inanimate objects, but we do. As someone who was raised Buddhist and has spent a lot of time thinking about and meditating on attachment, it was interesting to go through this separation. The anxiety I felt after I sold my car was comparable to if not greater to what I have in the past felt after separation and loss from people. I used to joke sometimes that I loved my car more than I loved some people, and last week’s episode suggests that may indeed be true.
Attachment and love are not quite the same, but they sure seem related. I can be attached to an idea or an object, but can I love it? I’m not if one can categorically love anything one can become attached to, but I clearly loved my car, as it were a being. To me, it was a being of sorts. This isn’t actually so odd, and is very much in our nature.
It’s mostly just in the modernist, rationalist era that we’ve drawn such a sharp distinction between the animate and inanimate. Animism was pretty much the norm across premodern societies, and I’d argue that we some cognitive dissonance around it now. Most of would agree that I door doesn’t have a soul, but what about a cherished object? I wouldn’t necessarily say that I believe that my car had a soul. I will acknowledge that it was just a machine; a hunk of steel, aluminum, polymers, and dead animal skin interspersed with oily liquids to keep it all together and working. Yet, I treated my car like it had a soul. Therein lies the dissonance.
On one hand, love is not a zero-sum game. If we could love and car the inanimate as at the animate, then why not? On the other hand, there is likely an ethical issue with love leading to diverting attention and resources to what is ultimately just a machine while neglecting people and the planet. Our responsibility ought to be for the people and planet; the animate first, and the inanimate second. I genuinely believe this is true, and it certainly makes sense in theory.
In practice, I am struck by just how bonded I was to this machine. The same goes for other people with houses and other important possessions. I felt genuine grief after selling my car. In truth, I’m still feeling it. I know that it was just a machine. But damn, do I miss it. We must never undervalue the importance of the bond between man and machine.
