Robert Pirsig honors the aggravation. "Motorcycle maintenance gets frustrating," he writes. "Angering. Infuriating. That's what makes it interesting." His approach is to inspect the aggravation itself. He proposes that when you're baffled, it means your current theories about how to proceed aren't working. You have to empty your mind of them, Zen-style, which takes time. He advises:
Just stare at the machine. . .Watch it the way you watch a line when fishing and before long. . .you'll get a nibble, a little fact asking in a timid, humble way if you're interested in it...
After a while you may find that the nibbles you get are more interesting than your original purpose of fixing the machine. . .Then you're no longer strictly a motorcycle mechanic, you're also a motorcycle scientist, and you've completely conquered the gumption trap of value rigidity.
Three terms for his last sentence bear examining. Pirsig's technique for becoming a "motorcycle scientist" is through studying how he arrives at solutions. By "value rigidity" Pirsig means "an inability to revalue what one sees because of commitment to previous values."
-Stewart Brand, Maintenance: Of Everything
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