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activities. Such a conclusion would put pleasurable absorption beyond the ken of any activity that is undertaken for the sake of making money, because although money is undoubtedly good, it is not intrinsically so. It represents a generic potency; the goodness of money floats free of any particular evaluations that could engage our attention and energize our activity. Keeping in mind some specific good to be acquired (such as an opportunity to climb Mount Everest) doesn’t solve this problem; such imaginings cannot imbue the work itself with mindfulness, and are likely to have the opposite effect of making us stand apart from the job. Sadly, this may be just what is wanted.

But all this is perhaps too categorical. For in fact, there are people who enjoy their work. You can earn money at something without the money, or what it buys, being the focus of your day. To be capable of sustaining our interest, a job has to have room for progress in excellence. In the best cases, I believe the excellence in question ramifies outward. What I mean is that it points to, or serves, some more comprehensive understanding of the good life.

I like to fix motorcycles more than I like to wire houses (even though I could make about twice as much money wiring houses).9 Both practices have internal goods that engage my attention, but fixing bikes is more meaningful because not only the fixing but also the riding of motorcycles answers to certain intuitions I have about human excellence. People who ride motorcycles have gotten something right, and I want to put myself in the service of it, this thing that we do, this kingly sport that is like war made beautiful.

My job of making motorcycles run right is subservient to the higher good that is achieved when one of my customers leans hard through a corner on the Blue Ridge Parkway, to the point of deliberately dragging his well-armored knee on the inside. This moment of faith, daring, and skill casts a sanctifying light over my work. I try to get his steering head bearings as light and silky as they can be without free play, and his swing arm bushings good and tight, because I want him to feel his tires truly. Only then can he make the road fully his own. If I am riding twenty yards behind him, I want to hear the confidence he has in the chassis I have tuned, expressed by the way he rolls on the throttle, brashly, through the exit of a turn. He is likely to pull away from me; I may find him waiting for me at Cumberland Gap with a verdict that lighter fork oil is called for, to get less damping in the front end.

I try to be a good motorcycle mechanic. This effort connects me to others, in particular to those who exemplify good motorcycling, because it is they who can best judge how well I have realized the functional goods I am aiming at.10 I wouldn’t even know what those goods are if I didn’t spend time with people who ride at a much higher level than I, and are therefore more discerning of what is good in a motorcycle.11 So my work situates me in a particular community. The narrow mechanical things I concern myself with are inscribed within a larger circle of meaning; they are in the service of an activity that we recognize as part of a life well lived. This common recognition, which needn’t be spoken, is the basis for a friendship that orients by concrete images of excellence.

My point, finally, isn’t to recommend motorcycling in particular, nor to idealize the life of a mechanic. It is rather to suggest that if we follow the traces of our own actions to their source, they intimate some understanding of the good life. This understanding may be hard to articulate; bringing it more fully into view is the task of moral inquiry. Such inquiry may be helped along by practical activities in company with others, a sort of conversation in deed. In this conversation lies the potential of work to bring some measure of coherence to our lives.

Concluding Remarks on Solidarity and Self-Reliance

This book grows out of an attempt to get a critical handle on my own work history; to understand the