Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Sometime back in the late 1960s a man named Robert Pirsig took off with his son on a journey across America. They rode a simple little Honda twin. They were joined in part by their friends, who each rode relat­ively expensive, relat­ively complicated BMWs.

On the way, Pirsig gathered together material from which he constructed the best selling, most widely read philo­sophical treatise ever published.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which was eventually published in 1974, having been rejected by a record-​​breaking 120 publishers, is a simply written, medit­ative muse upon the essential quality of life.

The book employs the mechanics of the motor­cycle as an arbiter of perception. The conclusion, (if such a thing is were possible) is that reason and romance, ration­ality and the imagin­ation are symbiotic elements in any person’s life.

If you can combine the two things, then the essential quality of your existence can only be increased.

This may seem a bit hifalutin’ for this context, but think about it.

To take part in an adventure as great as a transcon­tin­ental bike ride, you need a healthy amount of romance in your soul. Few of the stony realists among us could be bothered. For those who live their lives with too much brain and too little heart, the whole thing would be an exercise in frivolity.

But if, on the other hand, take off with your boy on the back of an old Honda with too little brain and too much heart, then you’re going to run into trouble. Not only must you saddle up with the romance of the road in your soul, but you must also have enough responsible werewithal and knowledge of mechanics to make the trip practically sustainable.

As we harbour dreams of our own personal roadtrips this summer, it makes sense to learn a lesson from Mr Pirsig and his boy.

This post is in honour of my son, Gabriel Coltrane Fordham.