Gumption and Gumption traps - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig

I recently re-read Robert Pirsig's book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It is a excellent book, I wish when I read it the first time in high school I would have better understood how applicable it would be to my life direction and ways of thinking.

Rereading his writing on 'gumption' and specifically 'gumption traps' was especially useful to me right now. Pirsig's definitions:

Gumption

—n. Informal.
1. initiative; aggressiveness; resourcefulness: With his gumption he'll make a success of himself.
2. courage; spunk; guts: It takes gumption to quit a high-paying job.
3. common sense; shrewdness.


Courage, also known as bravery, fortitude, will, balls, and intrepidity, is the ability to confront fear, pain, risk/danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. "Physical courage" is courage in the face of physical pain, hardship, death, or threat of death, while "moral courage" is the ability to act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal, or discouragement.

Gumption is enthusiasm, our psychic gasoline, a reservoir of good spirits that can be added to or subtracted from.

If you haven't got Gumption you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away.

Gumption Traps: - anything that causes one to lose sight of quality and thus enthusiasm for what one is doing.

Setback - thrown off the quality track by conditions that arise, external circumstances.


Hangup - thrown off the quality track by conditions that are primarily within yourself.

His writing on gumption and gumption traps start on page 472 or Kindle location 4900. As Pirsig says, gumption is a wonderful old Scottish word.

'The gumption-filling process occurs when one is quiet long enough to see and hear and feel the real universe, not just one's own stale opinions about it.'

'Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going. If you haven't got it there's no way the motorcycle can possibly be fixed.'

'Therefore the thing that must be monitored at all times and preserved before anything else is the gumption.'

'Throughout the process of fixing the machine things always come up, low-quality things,… These drain off gumption, destroy enthusiasm and leave you so discouraged you want to forget the whole business. I call these things "gumption traps".'

'… there are two main types of gumption traps. The first type is those in which you're thrown off the Quality track by conditions that arise from external circumstances, and I call these "setbacks." The second type is traps in which you're thrown off the Quality track by conditions that are primarily within yourself.'


Do you have gumption? What gumption traps are draining you?