Zen and the art of motorcycle riding

I love summer storms. It’s one of the many things I like about Colorado (& missed when living in coastal California): four definite seasons. 

Now I’m sitting at home relaxing after a late lunch, having gotten home on my motorcycle, after a slow, powerful swim at the pool, while it was already drizzling but just in time before the storm really rolled in. I love this safe, cozy, satisfied feeling. 

As I prepared myself & my bike for the ride home outside the recreation center, not letting the rain make me panic or rush, going through the methodical movements of putting away the lock, strapping down my bag on the back, and getting on my jacket and helmet and gloves, in that exact order, a thought struck me, a memory: the book “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” by Robert M. Pirsig. 

This is one of my absolute favorite books. I can still remember the bookstore where I bought it in Reggio Emilia. 

The first time I read this book, I was doing my PhD, over a dozen years ago. At the time, I didn’t ride motorcycles, yet, but I already dreamed of doing so and of taking long road trips, cross-country trips on my own bike someday. 

I reread the book for a second time five or six years ago, shortly after moving to California from Europe, in what was (& is) for me the “move of my liberation”. At that point, I knew I’d get my own motorcycle ASAP, and was already planning to get my license for it. 

For the first three years in California, before the pandemic started, I rode my motorcycle for hundreds of miles every summer and even during the other seasons whenever I had enough time to go on some trip (apart from using it regularly as an alternative to my bicycle to commute). I’d ride for miles, on my own, often camping, exploring new places, and visiting friends along the way. It made me feel free and empowered. But it also cleared my mind, like the spring cleaning of a cluttered house, especially at the end of the academic year every summer. 

Going through the methodical movements of preparing for my ride home today, it struck me with a new clarity that it isn’t only the adrenaline, the speed, the sense of freedom that I get from riding my motorcycle which grounds me and unclutters my mind: it’s also precisely those small methodical gestures, like a ritual, when I prepare to ride. 

Robert Pirsig in “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” tells the real story about a cross-country trip he took on his motorcycle with his son one summer: a trip that was meant both to help himself heal from serious mental illness and to heal his relationships with his beloved son (who was very sadly murdered a few years later). Pirsig described his relationship with his motorcycle as grounding and healing: not only the riding and traveling, but also or mainly the maintenance of the motorcycle. For Pirsig, too, the methodical gestures, the routines, the rituals of motorcycle maintenance were grounding, healing: literally a life-line for the mind (or the brain?). 

Now I see it clearly how similar it is for me, too. In these days that I have been feeling very profound sorrow and some anger as a wave of grief hits me again and as I struggle with little anxiety attacks that probably come from the overload of emotions and/or from weaning myself off the anxiety/depression meds, in these past days being around my motorcycle has been extremely and wonderfully grounding for me. Not just the riding, but also the rituals around preparing for the rides. And, in fact, I’ve been reminded of two situations in California, on in June 2018 and one almost exactly one year ago, when I had meetings with two (different) guys with whom I knew I would probably have upsetting or difficult conversations: on both occasions I purposefully rode my motorcycle to the meeting. Because I knew that no matter how those conversations would go, getting ready to ride back afterwards would get me back into my Zen place. Not only because of the focus and speed from riding; but also from focusing to prepare for the ride. 

Being around my motorcycle, connected to it, is a life-line for my mental health: it brings me back to my Zen place, almost instantly, like active meditation. 

Maybe this in one of the reasons I love my bike so much, in such an intense, visceral way…