Johnny's Gearbox

There’s a chapter by Michael Conge—a student of Gurdjieff—that’s been echoing in my head for weeks. It’s called “What Evolves?”, and it doesn’t offer easy answers. Instead, it opens a door—a difficult, humbling one—into the idea that we are machines. Not metaphorically, but functionally. We repeat ourselves. We react. We run on patterns. And yet… something in us watches.

Conge suggests that while we may never cease being machines, something within can awaken, witness, and perhaps even offer itself to something higher.

Rather than summarize the whole chapter, I let the idea ferment—and out came this short tale. Think of it as a modern-day koan told through the grease-stained hands of Johnny, an ordinary fool with just enough awareness to be dangerous.

Johnny's Gearbox

One day, Johnny was found lying under his car, covered in grease, tinkering with something.

A quiet monk passed by and asked, “What are you doing, Johnny?”

“I’m trying to fix the part of me that always ruins everything,” he said, hammering at a gear with a bent wrench.

The monk peered under the car. “Is it working?”

Johnny sighed. “Not really. Every time I think I’ve fixed one piece, another pops loose. I think I’m a machine. A very badly built one.”

The monk nodded slowly. “Then why not leave the machine altogether?”

Johnny blinked. “Leave it? But I live in it. I am it. Where else would I go?”

The monk smiled and asked, “If you are inside the machine, who’s the one noticing it’s broken?”

Johnny slid out from under the car, wiped his hands on his jeans, and stared into space.

Then he nodded solemnly.

“Clearly,” he said, “that part is broken too.”

And he went right back to hammering.

~

~The machine cannot fix itself.

But the witness can stop being a mechanic.~