I don't have the time at the moment to go over all of the intriguing and marvelous quotations I've discovered in this book since the last time I posted. But I would like to share with you a story involving it.
I like it when a book can be applicable to everyday life and when it easily connects to current circumstances. (I've also been liking a lot of alliteration as of late.) Since this is my purse book, I had it with me when I went to help a friend fix his car. Some seemingly minor thing got messed up and it snowballed. The nut got stripped, so we had to make a run to the hardware store. Then we had to make a run to another hardware store because the first one didn't have any. It got rather frustrating.
After the part was satisfactorily fixed, my friend took the car for a test drive. I read while he was gone. Here is a portion of what I read (beginning on page 272); you can decide whether or not it applied to the situation at hand:
I like the word "gumption: because it's so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn't likely to reject anyone who comes along....I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.
...
A person filled with gumption doesn't sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He's at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what's up the track and meeting it when it comes. That's gumption.
...
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. Biut it's nothing exotic. That's why I like the word.
...
If you're going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven't got that you might as well gather up all the other toold and put them away, because they won't do you any good.
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. But if you have got it and know how to keep it there's absolutely no way in this whole world that motorcycle can keep from getting fixed. it's bound to happen. 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, from a dusted knuckle to an accidentally ruined "irreplaceable" assemply. 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 hundreds of different kinds of gumption traps....I know it seems as though I've stumbled into every kind of gumption trap imaginable. What keeps me from thinking I've hit them all is that with every job I discover more. Motorcycle maintenance gets frustrating. Angering. Infuriating. That's what makes it interesting.
Now go back and read that through again. Only every time you see "motorcycle maintenance," replace it with "life."
