Some Therapy

One of the things we can do to mitigate the stress of everything feeling like it’s spiraling out of control is to take on something that is under our control. To fix or build something, for instance. It is therapeutic in the sense that Robert Pirsig wrote about in his book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

I read that book a long time ago, long before the country (and everything else along with it) began to feel like it was coming apart. I have also been in tune with the salving effect of polishing my old Zed’s aluminum engine casings to a high luster; using my ear as well as the vacuum gauges to sync the four carbs just right. One gets to know one’s machine in this way, as well as oneself. In the quiet and the contemplation that comes along for the ride – even if you’re still in the garage.

On cold winter days – and during wintry times – one can imagine warmer and better times, sure to come. Someday. Maybe – in the worst of times – not in time for you or for me. But for others, whose time will come. I often think about the scholars sequestered in abbeys and such after the fall of what was arguably Western Civilization Mark I. They took care of the important things during a dark time and so took care of us, who came along long after they were gone. I imagine they felt at peace taking care of those old books and scrolls and things that had already by then become relics of a gone and increasingly distant time.

I feel similarly when I polish up the old Kawasaki. I polish it for me but also for someone else, yet to come. Someone I may never meet. Perhaps someone not yet born. Just as the long-dead scholars knew the books they took care of would be read by people they’d never meet, also not yet born. There is comfort in this continuity. It is not different than a father leaving a legacy for his child except it is in that we are leaving legacies for more than just our own posterity but for posterity generally.

We humans have that great edge over other creatures in that we can pass along that which would otherwise die with us. Our kind is not condemned to starting from zero at every birth – because everything was lost at death.

Ideas endure, if we take care to protect and preserve them. Especially during the dark times.

It is possible the Zed and my other artifacts will be destroyed by the destroyers; this happened to many of the books that were lost during the last time we (as a species) went through a dark time. But this does not prevent me from doing all I can to improve the odds that they will survive and – in time – provide the same kind of Zen they have provided me each and every time I take the dust cover off and even before I do anything more than behold what’s underneath.

I like to think what the next person will feel when they also behold. Especially if it is a person who was not around to see it the first time. Like a person who sees the pyramids for the first time. Or the Pantheon. Did people actually build such things?

Indeed, they did.

And it makes me feel better knowing they will know it, with each turn of the buffing wheel.

. . .

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