To Buy or Not to Buy > IDEAS & IDEALS

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 To buy or not to buy a car is a question that has worried me for a long time, but I have successfully resisted making a decision yet. Now I feel I am pressed to make an answer to the question. Suddenly it began to bear heavily upon me. Salesmen, friends and colleagues, and, more than anyone else, my wife and children, are now conspiring to persuade me to buy one. I am surrounded all alone by the treacherous enemies. Now is the time, I think, I must end them, or yield to them.

     I don't think it is nobler for me or for anybody else to remain a man without a car in our time. It is a necessity, not a luxury. Having a car costs you money, of course, but costs money for something. It gives you speed, comfort, and privacy when you go to work, especially on a rainy day. You don't have to stand and wait in the rain on the bleak bus-stop. The bus won't come, and when it comes, it is crowded without exception. You feel really miserable when you can not see an inch ahead because of the gathered mist on your glasses the moment you get on the bus. Then you have to fight your way through the wet people with your elbows and the dripping umbrella. You would swear to buy a car the next day, when you find yourself late for work in spite of all the troubles you have suffered.

     In fact, there is no reason for me not to buy a car. Everything behoves me to buy one : my income, my status, and my driving experience. Not many people around me know that I have a driving license. It was issued by the State of Pennsylvania in 1973 when I was staying in the United States as a student. I can not forget the thrill and the excitement of having my car for the first time in my life. It was an old four-door Pontiac the ex-owner just wanted to get rid of at any price I bid. Anyway, it ran, and it was with me all the time during my sojourn in the United States for the next three years. It caused me a lot of troubles, of course, and by the time I left for home I became an auto-mechanic myself. I am still very proud of the fact that my first romance with a car was made in the native country of the cars.

     Then, why not? Why don't you buy a car? What kind of an eccentric are you? They are not asking. They are not demanding. They are threatening. One of my colleagues, who seemed the last man to buy a car in the world has bought a brand-new car recently, and he is as happy and pleased as anything. It was a mild shock for me. I thought he would never buy a car even for the world. He is older than me by several years, far over fifty. I know his eyes and financial situations are no better than mine. Apart from these conditions, what made me convinced that he would not buy a car was his strong antagonistic view on the growing materialistic and mechanistic orientation of man and the world. During the conversation with him, I thought I had at least one companion around who would not be crest-fallen for not having a car, and felt happy and secure. I thought that he was a real philosopher among so many professors of philosophy in the university. But I was mistaken. He bought a car.

     With the purchase of the car, the man has become a new man. As far as I know, the man was quite a lazy and sloppy man, judging from his face and shoes. I think he shaves, but  only once a week. I think he never polishes his shoes. Now he has become a very diligent and alert man. I have seen him several times completely absorbed in cleaning the body of his car with a piece of dirty cloth at a corner of the campus. Like a child who is given an expensive new toy, he is very careful not to dirty it. His way of life as well as his language has also changed from the serious and metaphysical to the more practical and worldly. He no longer extols the virtues of walking, nor complains of the bad air in Seoul from the car exhausts as he used to do in the past conversations with me. He does not ask me to drink with him any more after our work. He excuses himself that he is supposed to take his wife and children out in his car in the afternoon. He has become a new man. He has become young again.

     I am afraid that some may think that I am a hater of all the machines including the car. Quite the reverse is true. If there is anything I admire most in the world, that is the machine: its infinite variety and color, artistic design, admirable function, and formidable speed and power. If I were born again, I wish I could join the air force and be a pilot of F-4 Phantom jet fighter. I see in it a culmination of all human ingenuity, a perfect combination of technology and art.

     The salesman who has already frequented my office so many times will come to see me again tomorrow. I know he is sure of selling me a car, for he will not find a better prospective buyer. I know he will not back off this time as easily and obediently as he did last time. He knows I am driven into a corner. He will reiterate the dire need of a car for me and for my family. He  will even dwell on the injustice and the unreasonable obstinacy of not having a car in the time of speed and efficiency. He is right. Aye, there is the rub.

     I simply don't feel like driving a car again for the time being. I feel my passion for the expensive toy has remarkably waned since I came home. I know, sooner or later, I have to sit behind the wheel again, but I don't feel like driving it from tomorrow. I feel I have outgrown it as I had done, by turns, a whistle, a pocket-knife, a flashlight, a binocular, and a bicycle, etc., before. I feel as if my romance with the car was over when I left my old Pontiac behind in the United States, and I feel I need some time to revive the old flame. Not often, but from time to time, I miss the old Pontiac and wonder what has become of her.
          (October 8, 1985)