Synthesis

I receently read three books:  The Stranger, Noah's Compass, and The Lacuna. They were  about men who let life happen to them in different ways. All  three had shadow events which they had blocked out.  I know that The Stranger was  a profile of a circumspect. In Noah's Compass. the main character was a school teacher whose job had been downsized from a philosophy professor to finally a preschool aid. The Lacuna was written as the diaries of a man who became a famous writer and was destroyed by the McCarthy era Inquisition.

One soul walks tthrough life as a stranger.
The stranger  is circumspect with
a gun in his hand - disconnected from his
experiences.

One soul walks through life as a teacher.
The teacher is displaced from one job after
another  - accepting one of lesser meaning  each time.

One soul walks through life as a writer.
The writer captures the essence of
his experience  - only to be destroyed by national paranoia.
(He does disappear and there are hints of his having returned with a new identity)

I was drawn to these three stories NOT to awaken me to the demise of letting life happen (not to be confused with accepting the way life is). Rather,  it connected me with the deep cry from within which screams "Help me!" These cries I hear in the silence of people who I know are needing to tell their life stories and just don't know how to do it.

As Bill Salmon said in on earthrise@yahoogroups.com  recently, it isn't  objectivity, rationality, or a cognitive perspective that needs telling . Looking through that scientific lens  very likely causes hopelessness, confusion, and despair.

What, when, where, how, who and why are facades of the deeper story, one which boils within like a volcano about to erupt or a sun about to show its face on the horizon in the morning.

The stories that need telling are life experiences, those which are meaningful to the teller, and communicate ownership of the experience. They reveal the underlying purpose of having been born, or a dream realized or quashed, or a shadow brought into the light.

These three stories, The Stranger, Noah's Compass, and The Lacuna were presented to my experience one after the other. I asked myself  "What is the experience in each one which I connect with?" Then I ask myself "How are these three experiences are alike - or similar?". I meditate on the answer, going even deeper. Then ask, "What is the story I have to tell here, including the message, the insight, or the aha?" The final product, if you will, is a synthesis - a gestalt of what appeared to be three separate experiences, but has become one meaningful slice of  life.

After the objective, reflective, and interpretive aspects of your own experiences, pick two or three, go deeper to how they relate, and deeper still to the insight in the relationship? What is the result?



p.s. Back from having been published, I need to add to this story that I got a call from the local paper asking if I'd be interested in writing for them. The assignment is to interview local people, writing up their life experiences. Do I have some real questions to be asking them now? You bet I do. Thank you three books.