I took the bait. I used to know better, but I succumbed to fear and bought a house…
How, you ask, is buying a house a bad thing? It’s the American Dream!
This is an instance where words matter. Let’s gloss over the obvious fact that it’s called the American Dream because like a dream it lacks substance–it is ephemeral, something you can never catch, only chase, it is never truly enjoyed, and you can only experience enduring happiness when you are free from it’s allure…
Let’s also not dwell on the placating euphemism of “buying a house”. Very few people buy a house. Most people take on massive amounts of debt through a mortgage. Technically you may own the house, but is it really ownership if the Sword of Damocles hangs over your head and you lose ownership of your house if you miss a few payments? No! Of course not.
Financing aside, you did much more than buy a house, you bought into a system, THEE System. Sure, we all buy into the system every day, in a myriad of ways, but on a much more minor scale and usually without compromising our integrity. The obligation of owning a home, however, is so significant that it compromises your more altruistic and adventurous values. Your overriding concerns become for the value of your home to rise and to maintain a steady income so you can continue to live in “your” house.
When we use more honest language, the problem becomes obvious: you have bought into the system and the system is flawed. Deep down we all know that things are not as they should be. Humans are migratory, social creatures. We are not evolved to be isolated in our houses and unable to travel with the seasons of earth and personal development. When we are young we dream of improving the system by making housing affordable, improving walkability, protecting public parks, living in close contact with friends, etc.
I still had this dream when I bought a home as an insurance policy (just in case all the petitions I signed didn’t pan out), but I foolishly failed to remember an essential fact of human nature: experience changes us. In this case the things you own end up owning you.
Owning a home makes you more conservative and less willing to support ideas that threaten socio-economic stability and alleviate housing scarcity. Owning a home also makes you less willing to take risks with your career and move to new places.
But before you judge us sellouts too harshly you should consider that many of us did not intend to become this way. It’s much easier to be “yes in my backyard” before you have a backyard of your own.
And owning a home is not without personal suffering either. Another misuse of language is to say you are “hedging your bets” or “mitigating risk” when really you are creating “cognitive dissonance” or living “half-heartedly”.
Additional reading
My thinking is heavily influenced by these thinkers: