The Road Ahead

"When are we going to get going?" Chris says. "What's your hurry?" I ask. "I just want to get going." "There's nothing up ahead that's any better than it is right here."   Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig.

Through four chapters of the book I realize that this reading will be completely different than the other three. I must have hurried through the descriptions to get to the story. This time through I realize that the descriptions are the story.  I mentioned that I wondered how I could have missed so much. I missed so much because I didn't read all of the book.

My age and station in life gives me a completely different perspective on things including my perspective on this book. Since retiring from part-time vocational ministry last year, from Thursday evening until Tuesday morning, I have nothing definite I have to do.  My wife and I fill that time with meaningful activities (including hours of no activity), but neither of us has to be anywhere that we don't both want to be. We both still work, but its not like before. Eventually I hope to have nothing definite I have to do from Thursday evening until Thursday evening, but for now three days on, four days off is working really well.

As I read Motorcycle Maintenance I realize that with this reading I have nothing better to do than to read Motorcycle Maintenance. There is not another book I'm looking forward to reading.  There's not a Netflix movie I'd rather be watching.  There's nothing I'd rather be doing. But it's very difficult for me not to stop and write something about every other page. As Pirsig states so eloquently, "the real motorcycle is you."

One benefit of reading a book more than once, especially several times, is I know what's coming. I don't know what's coming about the specifics of the narrative, but I know what's coming in a general sense.  Just now when Chris asks his father to tell him a ghost story, I know why he hesitates.  I know which ghost is up ahead. I know that this ghost becomes the major character of the story. Therefore, when Phaedrus is mentioned I pay attention to the context each time. And because I have read so much about the Pirsigs and his book, I know what happens  to Chris.  I'm not just talking about what happens in the book, I'm talking about what really happens to him. In a bookstore in Nashville in about 1985, the tenth anniversary edition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance jumped off the shelf into my waiting hands.  In the preface Pirsig explains what had  happened to his eighteen year old son, Chris, in San Francisco. I started crying, then sobbing and I had to find a restroom to collect myself.

My granddaughter was spending a week with us the summer she was four years old.  My wife and I refer to our home when she is with us as "the land of 'yes' ".  Obviously, we are not irresponsible in granting her requests, but since she is very reasonable, there is usually no reason to deny her every wish. This particular morning it was just the two of us sitting at the breakfast table together. As she methodically  lifted her spoon of cereal to her mouth, she asked, "Big Dave, what are we going to do fun today?' I said, "How would you feel about riding a real train?"  She brightened up and exclaimed, "Let's do it!"  Riding Chattanooga's Incline Railway with her, like I did with my great aunt when I was six,  brought me incredible joy.

So now I too live in the land of "yes".  The answer to questions that used to be an automatic "no" because I had better things to do are now answered in the affirmative. After reading Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I asked myself, "Would now be a good time to read Pirsig's book again?"  And the answer was "Yes.  Yes it would be a good time." And Pirsig says that regarding making "good time"  on their trip, the emphasis is on "good."  The time reading this book is good.

Just like I don't know specifically where Pirsig and his friends  are headed day to day, I don't know exactly where the book will take me this time around. But I don't need to know, because I'm already there. "There's nothing up ahead that is any better than it is right now."  The road ahead is inviting, but it can't be much better then where I sit.