Phaedrus

This article contains several spoilers to the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.  If you intend to read the book  you might not want to read this.  On the other hand this information might could jump start your understanding of a deeply complex narrative. More than 10 million copies have been sold. Most of us who have read it have read it more than once. I’ve read it four times. Just because you haven’t read it doesn’t mean the book’s not worth reading and it doesn’t mean that you’re a worthless reader.  It just means you’ve never read it and may not care to.

The Phaedrus was a book written by Plato around 360BC.  I’ve never read that book.  That Phaedrus is not who Phaedrus is to me.  My “Phaedrus” is the fictional creation of Robert Pirsig in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance published in 1974. “Phaedrus” is also a very real emotional ghost in my own life.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has been called “fictional autobiography”.  But  the events of the 17- day motorcycle trip were essentially true and the four people who made the trip were very real. Besides the author, his son and two friends made the trip from  Minnesota to California, well except the friends bailed out in Montana.  I didn’t understand just how real Chris was and had become to me until I picked up a 10^th anniversary copy over 30 years ago. I was in a bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee when the book virtually jumped off the shelf into my hands.  I opened to the preface and read that Chris had been murdered. I came unglued, I had to go to the restroom to cry and to collect myself. Twelve year old Chris had been the glue that held his father together and who made the trip possible for all of them. Now Chris Pirsig was dead. He died on November 17,1979 at the age of twenty two. Years later Pirsig would say “I kept living more out of  habit than anything.” Robert, the author, died on April 24, 2017 at the age of 88.

Robert Pirsig was mentally ill.  He suffered with a variety of mental and emotional problems.  Those problems become apparent in his book. He not only recalled his mental illness before treatment, but became progressively ill on the trip. The reader learns that Pirsig had entered  treatment in a mental hospital several years before the motorcycle trip.  Furthermore, you learn that he had undergone several shock treatments while he was there. After he was released from the hospital and started getting better Phaedrus came into being. Phaedrus was the part of Pirsig before the treatment.  The ECT had taken a toll so Phaedrus appeared in random times and places. He felt Phaedrus’ presence before he figured out why.

Yesterday my wife and I were traveling home from a fun and meaningful family Christmas gathering in Montgomery, Alabama  and visits with two sets of lifetime friends in Birmingham. We were on I-459 in Birmingham approaching the interchange with I-59 north when he showed up. Phaedrus’ company is unmistakable. Although I had nothing on my mind but good memories and positive expectations, I suddenly felt that poignant mixture of hope and sadness. More sadness than hope.  As I traveled up I-59 north toward Chattanooga, I contemplated my emotional plight and I understood I was feeling the shadow of a multitude of trips up  that highway between 1979 and 1983. Phaedrus remembers so many things that I have long forgotten. Phaedrus is not evil, but he doesn't always have good intent.  35 years ago was both a wonderful and horrible time.  Those trips north always involved love and fun from Enterprise or Jasper in my rear-view mirror and dread through my windshield. Looking back,  I really had nothing to dread;  it’s just what I chose to feel. And my emotional system was happy to accommodate.  

Yesterday afternoon I thanked Phaedrus for the memory and then  told him to go away.  I may have chosen to feel down and out 35 years ago, but I had way too much to look forward to yesterday. Between hope and sadness, I chose hope.  Pirsig also had to make a decision.  In a dramatic showdown on a mountain top and again in California he had to decide if he was going to give in to Phaedrus or continue the trip with Chris.  He chose his son.  They completed the trip together. 

There's a term in psychology called emotional intelligence.  I have not always been emotionally intelligent, but I think I'm getting there.  Like yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama I can't control where and when Phaedrus will show up, but I can control what I do with his company.  "Be gone!", Jesus said. And he was.

Eventually I'll read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance again.  Each time I read it I not only understand the book so much better, but I understand myself so much better. The title page states that the book is "an inquiry into values."  Being reminded of what really matters is a lesson I never get tired of learning. I don't ride motorcycles, but I can read.