We Have to Talk

It’s a well know statement we’ve all heard. In fact, a male friend of years past once told me, in the world of men and women, the four words that most strike terror in the hearts of men are: We have to talk. Maybe this conversation will create discomfort in you or maybe inspire your curiosity. But either way, we have to talk.

Talking is what we humans do. Yes, first we think,…usually, but that is just a form of inner talk, and for some reason, we equate our capacity to express in words with deserving superior station on this earth.  Me, I’m more impressed with the fact that whales can communicate across oceans. But like you, what I have are words. And like you, I can build empires with them or crush spirits, inspire minds or talk trash, baby talk my dog or self-talk to me about my shortcoming or whisper words of love to my suffering heart. But what we need to understand is that those words came with meanings, prepackaged, ready-made interpretations, which we mold into beliefs. And what do we do next?  We believe them. We swear they are true: That bum ruined my life; If I just had enough money, I could be happy too; She’s an idiot; He stole my heart.

  From the insightful Herman Hesse in Klein and Wagner:

Mind invented contradictions, invented names; it called some things beautiful, some ugly, some good, some bad. One part of life was called love, another murder. How young, foolish, comical this mind was. One of its inventions was time. A subtle invention, a refined instrument for torturing the self even more keenly and making the world multiplex and difficult.

Do you ever find yourself envying your cat or dog in their all too sane approach to life? A life where they live and breathe in this very moment? They are not making forays into a mind full of stories about yesteryear or fantasies they wish for tomorrow. What happens to us in the moment where our dog’s tail bangs the floor in welcome or our cat shows us what serendipitous play looks like. What usually happens is we sit there instead talking to ourselves, and doing it so believably that we entangle ourselves in seeming appropriate emotions even though nothing…is…actually….happening to us. And we’re the supposed intelligent ones? Here’s where we shyly laugh at ourselves and thank our dog or cat for not telling on us.

The saddest part of it all, for me, is that we no longer have elders, no longer have insight and wisdom gleaned through the ages that someone protects and brings forward to each new generation. They would have taught us about what’s real versus what we’re making up. Instead, all we have left, outside our ridiculous beliefs, are a few precious books and a smattering of humans who have worked all their lives attempting to remember that we are much more than talking creatures. We are creatures whose perceptions actually create life as we experience it.  We are creators of a startling order who don’t realize that the majority of each day’s experience is a product of our minds, rather than actual interaction with the world around us. I have no idea why this seeming miserable trick has been played on us, but we are not without resources. It’s just that we must get serious about untangling things so we can get straight whose life it is we’re living.

 In my Morning Pages I put it this way:

“We the wordsmiths,

we the lover of language and meanings,

midwives birthing our stories and poems,

sensible enough to know fiction from non-fiction….in our trade,

yet totally bamboozled by our own lives.

Living as if we’d somehow escape

the consequences of made-up names and meanings,

of inventions that exist only in our minds,

while all of Nature chuckles kindly,

its voice, though barely audible, whispering

genre, genre, you’ve mistaken your life’s genre.”

But take heart. For as the great sage Kabir said: “When the Guest (your inner awareness) is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.”

Want it that badly, then let’s see what we talk about then.

  

If you would like to see how we talk about relationship,

pick up Suffer the Little Children.

If you’re curious about a new way to talk about health and well-being,

 read Dying to Know.

If you are doubtful life could be lived any other way,

let Miss Imogene Ware, in the profound love story, Accidents of Birth,

show you what that looks like.

Novels by Christina Carson on Amazon

A Night of Confessions

by Christina Carson

Death, the word that usually clears the room, only it didn't clear the room this night…

“Heh, Buddy thanks for inviting us to your place tonight”.  Chip clapped Buddy on the shoulder as he and his wife Liz squeezed past him in the narrow entry way of Buddy’s apartment. “I've had it with the noise in that pub where we usually get together.”

“Can’t stand the noise, eh. You getting old, Chip?” Andy yelled from across the room.

“Well as a matter of fact, yes, and so are you.”

Andy chuckled. “Only in years, Chip. My inner me is as insane as ever.”

Chip rolled his eyes. Liz, ignoring them both, spotted Andy’s wife, Judy, in the kitchen. She was putting together some cheese plates with crackers as well as warming some finger food. They hugged like sisters. They were roommates their first year in university and unlike many of the girls forced into sharing a room with a stranger, Judy and Liz became fast friends.

That left only the other singles in the group to arrive, and for unknown reasons, they were always last. The group had suggested many theories as to why that was, most not at all flattering, but it hadn't daunted Susan or Zach and the next door bell was Susan standing in the hall, leaving Zach to arrive a good twenty minutes later.

 It was an unusual group, seven people who deemed one another important enough to nurture this friendship over thirty years. Now in their mid-50s, children raised, jobs less riveting, ex’s banished, and futures less programmed, a new phase of life was upon them, the end game, and though they had shared their problems of smart-mouthed kids, financial worries, job losses and marriage break-ups through the years, they were loath to explore this stage of life in any way other than jokes.

As each grabbed a LeBatts Blue and scattered themselves over the chairs, chesterfield and floor, it was Zach who would speak the words that always started their evenings together. There had been occasional attempts in the past to drop this tradition, labeling it corny or childish. But, now that they were getting older, the ritual had strangely become infused with new meaning. Wherever they chose to meet, the convener stood, which quieted this talkative crowd, an often caught the attention of nearby tables. Then he or she would speak these same words they started with so long ago. Zach, who’d been a Fine Arts/Drama major and had gone on to stage and screen, was the convener this evening and everyone liked his delivery best. Zach stood and said in piglet’s high squeaky voice:

“We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet.

Even longer,' Pooh answered.”

Pooh & Company was what they called themselves back in the day, and Pooh & Company they still were. Yet, little did they know the further poignancy the quote would acquire before this evening ended. 

With the gathering convened, small talk popped up in various groupings of the seven. They kept a serious line of chatter going until Chip said above the din, “Did you all hear about Richard?”

Richard had started with the group when they graduated from university. He brought his new wife Drew to it and stayed until his marriage broke apart. Everyone tried to get him back, but he plunged into his engineering career and began to travel internationally on oil and gas seismic crews. Chip had seen him a couple of times, but each time Richard was evasive and distant. Chip told the group he thought Richard was in trouble, maybe depressed, but it was impossible to follow up as he’d ship out and be gone again without warning.

“I ran into Toby who told me Richard had a heart attack last week and died on the spot in Kuala Lampur or some place in Malaysia.”

The group stopped talking, then intermittently murmured then sat quiet, then murmured again. They were at that time in their lives when death was a new frontier, one that was increasingly in their purview, and tonight, thanks to Richard, these friends crept a little closer to its edge.

“Is there anyone among us who believes they’re not afraid of death, their own that is? Just curious.” Susan, a professor of literature, asked the question and quieted the room better than an old schoolmarm wielding a ruler.

To finish the story, click here.

A Voice of Freedom – The Poet Kabir

by Christina Carson

Friend, please tell me what

I can do about this world I hold to,

and keep spinning out of control !

I gave up my sewn clothes and wore a robe,

but I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.

So I bought some burlap,

but I still threw it elegantly over my left shoulder.

I pulled back my sexual longings,

and now I discover I am angry a lot.

I gave up rage,

and now I notice I am greedy all day.

I worked hard at dissolving the greed,
and now I am proud of myself.

When the mind wants to breaks its link with the world,
it still holds onto one thing.

Kabir says: Listen my friend,
there are very few that find the path.

Regardless, what could be more valuable than the endeavor to loosen ourselves from our self-absorption. Our spirit seeks freedom from the encumbrances of the way we’ve been conditioned to believe life is. And trying to beg out on the grounds of work and family commitments is no good. Our daily lives form the workshop for this undertaking, friends and family awakening us to the shortcomings of our inherited beliefs, and work, empty of purpose and fulfillment, becoming our inspiration to look beyond.

Kabir was a weaver, a common man from Banares living in the late 1500 century or there about. His poetry is salty, confrontational and knowing of the truth he came to grasp. He spoofs that which he sees as false. He pulls me up short. He makes me laugh, at me mostly. But his is one of several great voices of freedom across time who can help us step over the mere puddle we cling to as us and into the ocean we actually are.

Thanks to Robert Bly’s Kabir, Ecstatic Poems for this version of Kabir’s poetry.

Christina Carson, Author