I recently replaced; among other things, the clutch in my 1962 Ford. It’s a very cool vehicle that’s endured a lot of misuse and abuse at the hands of it’s masters over the years – so this car & I have a lot in common. I love this car – I’m emotionally invested in it and after 13 years, I oughta be. vehicles of this vintage were intended to be worked on and I intend to work on this one, and although there’s really only one way to do most things on cars like this, there’s still a pretty generous margin for error and I’ve certainly spent some time there.
Replacing the clutch (…again) can be a big job. If you’re looking at your clutch, there’s a strong likelihood that you did a lot of work to get to a point where you could see it. I’ve seen mine a few times and it always involves multiple cuss words to access it.
The reason I was looking at it this time is because I killed my throw-out bearing. If you don’t know what that is, it’s what disengages the transmission from the engine temporarily so you can shift gears, and it does that every time you step on the clutch pedal. If there’s too much tension on it, it will keep pressing; albeit lightly, and cause undue wear & tear on the clutch components – those components we just did a lot of work to access. That said, if there’s not enough tension on ‘the return spring‘ that is responsible for re-engaging the transmission to the motor, then the throw-out bearing will; again, continue to press up against things it ought not be pressing up against – causing that very same kind of undue wear & tear.
Needless to say, my clutch had been out of adjustment for a long time, and the components burnt out. This is interesting to me as I do a lot of self analysis when I’m working on my car – my time in the garage is a reflective and contemplative time for me, and when I realized that things were set up to fail NOT because there was too much tension on a mechanism, but because there was not enough, I had a eureka moment in more than one way.
Yes, I solved the problem – or part of it, anyway. The rest was done through some routine adjustments that are akin to completing the job. A eureka moment, to be sure.
But the idea that a system was unsuccessful due to a lack of tension struck me as very interesting in a metaphor for life. We actually see this al the time – we know people who have said; or perhaps we’ve said it ourselves – if we don’t have a deadline, the task won’t get done. Any non-pressing task will inevitably get back-benched for time sensitive ones. We pay our bills on time because if we don’t, there’s a penalty. There are deadlines for homework assignments, grant applications, race trophies, showing up to work… quotas for tasks assigned… donation commitments… speed limits… final exams… meeting times… the list goes on and without some structure around both the ‘catching’ and the ‘releasing’ then nothing really works as intended.
We may not count these things as being particularly stressful because they come with the territory of making commitments – even fun commitments like going to a movie or meeting friends for dinner have some structure around them. It’s not until we’re over-extended, or too-tightly wound that we start failing to be able to keep up with even the most casual commitment, and our personal systems go into failure.
The lesson here is about striking balance, and setting ourselves up for success.
Everything I am doing, I am doing in order to get to my preferred destination, but if we’re not seeking balance in the meantime, we’re bound to break down before we ever arrive, and in includes an amount of tension as well as relief.
The Conscious Pilgrim 