I was hitching a ride with a woman named
Emily. She and I were on a similar journey: touring the country for no apparent
reason other than exploration. We crossed paths somewhere in Ohio and she was
kind enough to take me all the way into Wisconsin where we met a group of four
people. One of their motorcycles had broken down, so Emily, being the kind soul
she was, decided to stop and see if we could help out. We came to find out
their names were Phaedrus, Chris, Sylvia, and John. While John and Sylvia were
nice enough, I was fascinated by Chris and his father. It seemed like a simple
enough fix for us, we just needed to take off the hard cover plate and see what
exactly we were dealing with. Emily swears she had done it a hundred times, all
you needed was the right materials and a bit of patience. Unfortunately, the
group had gotten a bit antsy and instead decided to try to remove the screw
with some pliers, effectively stripping it.
Phaedrus was weirdly calm about the whole
situation. He knew that they were in a bit of trouble, but he was totally Zen
about the art of motorcycle maintenance. He explained to me about the concept
of “stuckness,” a state of being that described our situation perfectly. No
matter what you do, you’re just stuck. Physically, the screw was stuck, and we
were quickly running out of options, leading us to feel mentally stuck as well.
This tends to make us feel inadequate and frustrated, and the stress of the
situation continues to grow and grow and finally we’re so beyond furious at
this tiny little screw! All we wanted to do was kick the motorcycle over and
move on with our lives, but we couldn’t. We were completely stuck, sweating,
angry, and Phaedrus seemed perfectly fine. Every logical solution we can think
of doesn’t work, and we’re left questioning everything we thought we knew about
the world because we are just SO FRUSTRATED OVER THIS DAMN LITTLE SCREW! After
about an hour of total anguish, Chris walks back. He had been exploring a small
thicket of shrubs and came back with a string (of unknown origins). We all
watch as he wiggles the string underneath the thing’s head and ties a loop.
Then, he slowly pulls it out, twisting with his fingers when he can, until it’s
finally out and the cover is off. He simply shrugs and then sit down next to
his dad. Huh. Who knew an eleven-year-old knew how to become unstuck?
I watched in disbelief as Chris deftly wiggled the string in a loop around the stuck screw and as the cover came off cleanly. How in the world did he know how to do that? Chris didn't carry around a shop manual for cycles. Chris didn't carry around the precious Chilton's Motorcycle Troubleshooting Guide like I did. Hell, he never even looked at my copies. And yet the screw had become unstuck so perfectly, so cleanly.
ReplyDeleteI began to realize that what he did could not have been an act of classical rationality. My motorcycle maintenance was often a beautiful display of classical rationality, the product of many hours scrupulously studying intricate diagrams, listening to curious sounds, observing minute details about the bike's operation. I put together systems in my mind until the solution could be deduced by pure logic.
But Chris had never looked at any of this stuff. So I had to ask him, "Chris, how did you know to do that?"
He looked at me blankly, as if I had asked a stupid question. "How did I know to loosen the screw? When I got in there...I don't know. I just felt around. It was just intuition, I guess."
I let that hang in the air. Intuition. Intuition! What did my diagrams, my books, my careful study mean in the face of effortless intuition?!
He continued, "But I wouldn't have known which screw to go at if you hadn't pointed it out from all of your diagrams and stuff."
That...that only confused the dialectic further. It weighed on me, heavier and heavier, but I don't think Chris noticed.