I took my soul in for a tune-up with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I was 19 the first time I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Lit class at Michigan State. One of those “great American novels” they make you read because it’s supposed to change your life. I remember standing in the bookstore, pulling it off the shelf, thinking, Holy fuck, this thing is massive. Philosophy, motorcycles, and midlife crisis nonsense I had to carry around.
I was annoyed. But I read it. And then I tossed it aside.
At 19, I didn’t care about a man trying to put himself back together. I hadn’t broken it yet. I chalked it up to Not For Me and moved on.
Fast forward 25 years, life humbles you. Beats the shit out of you. Teaches you lessons in ways you never wanted to learn.
I have survived heroin addiction.
I have survived six overdoses.
I have survived a failed marriage and a divorce.
I have lost people I loved.
I have carried the weight of choices I can never undo.
The pain of living—it’s carved into my skin.
And now, picking up Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance again, I don’t see a crazy old kook rambling about philosophy. I see a man standing at the wreckage of his past, staring at a road that can’t take him back.
At 19, I ran from Phaedrus, the name the narrator gives to his inner monologue during highly unstable moment. But now? I don’t deny him.
I think we all have a Phaedrus inside us. The part that questions too much, digs too deep, risks losing itself in the process. The part that doesn’t just want to live, but wants to understand.
This book is a fucking chore to read, but it’s worth it. It wanders, it circles itself, it challenges you—but by the end, when everything snaps into place, when you finally see what the narrator has been trying to reconcile this whole time, it hits hard.
I see myself in this book.
I see my father in this book.
I wasn’t ready for it before. But now? Now, it feels like something I was always meant to read.
If you haven’t read it, I recommend it.
If you’ve read it before, read it again.
It might just change you too.
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