Ultimate Quest

by Christina Carson

I recently finished a second reading of Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. A psychiatrist and neurologist by training, Dr. Frankl, at age 39, found himself a prisoner at Auschwitz and then moved to a camp associated with Dachau. It was under the intensely forbidding circumstances of prison life that he was compelled to begin exploring the nature of and need for meaning in human existence. One of the conclusions he drew was that man can find meaning in any situation and, in fact, must, for it is only through meaningful existence that we can endure, even the intense suffering he knew.

Among all its gruesome imagery, the book is liberating. My first reading of it years ago allowed me to understand the power that comes to those willing to take responsibility for their lives. I figured if Frankl managed to live without blaming others for his fate, horrible as it appeared, how could I stand there and point fingers at others in a much less dire set of circumstances? That choice invited me to look more deeply into my life. When I did, what I saw was me assigning meaning to the actions and events around me not searching for meaning within them. The former results in blaming others and traps you in your fate. The latter gives you a vision of how you can endure and rise beyond the problem confronting you.

We are raised to be far more interested in assigning meaning than in accessing it. Prisoners in a concentration camp, however, can’t

afford that luxury if they want to survive. That’s what Viktor Frankl came to understand and made incredibly clear to me: We choose how to perceive our circumstances; we then get to live with what we chose. This is the most accessible level on which the search for meaning exists, but there are others.

When Mark Twain observed: “The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day your find out why,” most people assume the quote refers to some mighty achievement or a holy grail for our personal lives. We anguish over the lack of sense and fulfillment our lives offer us and assume finding that would be the be-all end-all. However, as grand as a meaningful project or relationship can be, they are not the hallmark of human existence. 

There is an even more profound yearning for meaning at the species level, cosmic rather than personal. Life is meant to expand, not contract. We are creatures of incalculable wisdom and creativity. We are meant to be free spirits, unattached to the plethora of habits (mindlessly applied meanings) that keep us petty and afraid. That explains to me why in one of those seeming unbearable moments when Viktor Frankl cried out for relief what came to him were these words: "I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space."

Ultimately we are here to grasp the fundamental meaning of human nature – spacious, serene and unchanging. We are called to know beyond doubt what we truly are and why we are here. Imagine a life driven by that search for meaning. Just imagine…

Integral to the novels I write is

 a search for meaning, since for me,that is the

driving force in life.

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

The Importance of Forgetting

by Christina Carson

It’s the edge of summer and it always reminds me of that glorious last day of school, when you awoke the next morning knowing you could walk out that door into a world that asked nothing of you but to be back by lunch and later supper. And in the months that followed, you could forget the feel of walls, shouts of “don’t run” in the halls and rooms without window, as the rest of your senses opened to their own beautiful memories of bird song, brook babble and flower scent. You could remember the wind not as a breeze from an air vent but a friend that brought you messages of the world around you. And best of all, you could forget a world made rigid with man’s construction—times tables, drawing between the lines, and sitting still— to return to a world throbbing and real at every turn. I think the forgetting was the most healing part.

Strangely, as adults we find ourselves in the same conundrum as when we were school age kids. You’d think we’d learn. Instead, we confine ourselves now not only by a different set of walls but also a sense of unending duty. Years ago, while sitting with a native about my same age, we talked of his fears, how he wanted, nay, needed to be able to return to his people’s original way of life if he was ever going to be able to rekindle within him a sense of peace and harmony. If he could not live in that manner, free from the modern world’s rigidity of form and regulations, he felt it would be lost to him forever. As he spoke, I could feel the panic arising in me, for I’d told myself that I could find my way back to awareness of our true nature no matter what. To imagine otherwise felt like some cruel trick the universe had played on us. I remember saying to him at the time how that just couldn’t be so, but doubt was now nibbling at my trust.

Years later I understood what he was trying to tell me, however. One must have something in their lives that’s real, thus renewing

— a realm where truth lives and washes you clear of the fabrications you experience inside the walls. Our childhood time spent racing barefoot across the fields, wading in the brooks, looking for what lived in every crack and cranny and making friends with it had a unique value. For only there did we consistently find life without puffery, deception or meanness; only there did we see harmony along with playfulness, simplicity amidst the luxurious beauty. As Mary Oliver remembers in her poem, “Just as the Calendar Began to Say Summer:”

…By fall I had healed somewhat, but was summoned back
to the chalky rooms and the desks, to sit and remember
the way the river kept rolling its pebbles,
the way the wild wrens sang though they hadn’t a penny in the bank,

and the way the flowers were dressed in nothing but light.

She too knew how we could carry those memories a long way and an even longer time and how they keep us clear about what matters. 

Find a pocket of quiet. Slip your shoes and socks off and walk through grass somewhere. Then plop down and sit just listening and watching until your breathing slows and your shoulders drop. What matters then? Forget the rest.

Christina Carson, Author

New novel now available on Amazon.

Accidents of Birth Trilogy Summary

The greatest influence in setting the course of anyone’s destiny is the family into which they’re born. What we’re taught to believe, what is asked of us, the burdens we’re given, the lies we share all start there. Through the eyes of an illiterate, Black housekeeper, Imogene Ware, born in 1928 in the post-Civil War enclave of Small Town in rural Mississippi, we get to view the last half of the racially charged, politically divisive 20th century through her eyes. Quirky, gritty and acutely discerning, Miss Imogene fights to save her own children and the white Sutton children in her charge from the happenstance of their births, all the while honoring her mother’s deathbed behest, a mandate to love the world.

Book One: Where It Began

from the Accidents of Birth Trilogy

Book One of the Accidents of Birth Trilogy introduces the protagonist, Imogene Ware, an illiterate Black housekeeper, whose insightful yet quirky nature has her carry on conversations as fluidly with her cart horse, Polly, as she does with God. Having accompanied her mother to the Sutton household since Imogene was 10 years old, she thinks she has learned the job sufficient to carry on when her mother is taken ill and dies. What she didn’t notice in those years of training, however, was that not only must she keep house, but also withstand the tides of the emotional storms that wash through the Sutton family. This first book covers ten years (1956-1966) of Miss Imogene’s initiation into life without her mother and into domestic circumstances she never imagined, all the while watching the world outside the Sutton household being rocked by racial unrest that is now touching even her isolated corner of rural Mississippi.

Great story with a loving and moral heart – Author Patricia Zick

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