Moments ago, a person from my email hit me with a question that cycled in my mind like a squeaky hamster wheel.
You might say I have too much time on my hands, but I don't. My house is a mess, and my yard needs attention, and I came to my office to write, but first, check the email, right?
Here’s the question I found that stuck with me. It came from Katherine May from her Substack site:
"If you could burn one book you had to study (without anyone thinking you had slid into fascism), which would it be?"
"Candide," I yelled. (See I can yell in my office.)
However, I only knew how to say the word, not spell it. It's pronounced "Conde." I knew it was French, so I googled and found it was spelled "Candide," written by Voltaire in the mid-18th century.
And I learned why it bugged me so.
I figure you are a writer and might identify with my issue, and why I remember that book after so many millennia.
At first, I thought I was wasting time by tracking down a book I read so long ago, but then I realized why I hated that book—it represented the same issues I had then and still haunt me now.
Please tell me if this resonates somehow in your psyche.
Voltaire wrote Candide, a classic philosophical novel in the mid-18th century (called "The Enlightenment Period.") It was required reading for my Humanities college class.
It's the classic story of the hero getting kicked out of paradise and encounters the world for the first time. You know the drill; it is the hero's story of being forced out of paradise, or at least out of his comfort zone. He becomes like an orphan who must figure out everything for himself.
Voltaire introduces Candide as a good-natured young man living a sheltered life in the idyllic castle, where his teacher, Pangloss, presents the teaching that everything is predetermined to be for the best. Candide's belief in Pangloss' optimistic philosophy is shattered when he is expelled from the castle after being caught in a romantic encounter with Cunégonde, the baron's daughter.
In the outside world, he encounters a series of misadventures, and Candide experiences the harsh realities of war, poverty, and the cruelty of mankind, all while questioning the validity of Pangloss's teachings.
The baron refuses to allow Cunégonde to marry Candide, although Candide saves himself and her many times. And to add insult to injury, the women in this book are used and abused by men. Cunégonde ends up as an old lady and a slave, having lost her beauty and her innocence. Still Candide wants to marry her, although she no longer presents his ideal. And still, the baron refuses to allow her to marry someone beneath her station. (Some station.) The beginning of the book sets the stage for Candide's quest for understanding and happiness in a world rife with suffering and injustice.
For a young questioning girl fresh from a Christian background, this presented a series of questions I have encountered throughout my life. And for a writer and want-a-be novelist, this also smacks of the hero's journey that is the basis of a story. (You know, without angst, you have no story.)
First, you kick your protagonist out of paradise, or from their comfort zone, you throw rocks at them, aka, send them into a series of struggles and challenges or abject cruelty and see how they get out of it.
Sometimes the struggles cause PTSD instead of a glorious ending regarding the splendor of life.
Voltaire's book came on the heels of Cervantes's Don Quixote—two poor fellows thrown out into the cruelties of life. On top of that there was the rape of women.
What was that professor doing to us?
Showing us the
stark realities of life? Maybe he was teaching us to grow up.
It felt more like the evil Knight holding a mirror before Don Quixote forcing him see how crazy he was.
Yes, there are conflicting messages in life. There is uncertainty, doubting, and questioning. And through it all, the individual seeks to find their center.
There is faith in a religion that can and does, for many, give them security that someone, a higher power, has their back and will be there for comfort.
We have science that provides many answers and questions, and we know that even researchers have biases.
There is a philosophy that asks the big questions and has some answers depending upon which door you open.
Some know THE TRUTH.
There is Truth that varies according to the person telling it.
There is history according to the person who writes it. (HIS -STORY.)
Some say, "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it."
Am I doing the same thing the professor did to me by presenting so many options that the student becomes overloaded?
Or do we say, "I have an internal knowingness that will guide me? I will trust that it will not steer me wrong, and if I am mistaken, it will correct me, for I am a child of the Universal Consciousness that is ongoing and forever changing."
“I will go along for the ride.”
And we know that sometimes a moment of understanding hits us with such vigor we fall off our chairs and then from our position on the floor—the one we just swept—we look up and see The Muse smiling.
(Watch the Ron Howard movie Parenthood, in which some like the merry-go-round that goes in circles. And some like the thrill of a Roller coaster that goes up and down.)
Let's continue our search for understanding.
Choose wisely.
Jo
P.S.
I mentioned the orphan, which can be interpreted as an archetype by which people live. I found this years ago in a book titled The Hero Within by Carole S. Pearson PhD. Archetypes explain so much to me for they represent our travels through life. Some become stuck at one archetype instead of embracing them all.
1. We are born Innocent, where our needs are met.
2. The Orphan Archetype represents something that happens which forces us to see the world—school happens, or something hurtful.
3. When we finally realize that we must fight our own battles, we become The Warrior.
4. The Wanderer travels the world in a state of awe.
5. The Martyr. Those are times when we see that we are willing to lay down some of our desires for another.
6. Finally, we realize that we are the master of our fate, and thus we become The Magician, where we find we have power over our own life.
The Magician sits beside the Innocent indicating that we come full circle. Only this time we have walked the steps, battled the demons, faced our fears, and thus we have earned to be called an Innocent.
No wonder The Muse watches for those innocent moments and it is there she bestows her blessings upon us.
