My dear friend Mia’s death leads me back to the writing of Charles Johnson: author, philosopher, professor, and humanist.

Johnson offers solace in the form of a bonfire: his words inspire me to stay awake, aware, and involved, even when I have every reason to retreat to my bed and cover myself in blankets for an extended period of time. As if that weren’t enough, he gives the distinct impression that his process of writing is as calm and clear as his finished product.

I picked up his collection of essays, Turning the Wheel, and found connections between creativity, the quest for freedom, identity, and Eastern philosophy. In his preface, Johnson writes:

“…[M]y sense of black life in a predominantly white, very Eurocentric society — a slave state until 1863 — was that our unique destiny as a people, our duty to our predecessors who sacrificed so much and for so long, and our dreams of a life of dignity and happiness for our children were tied inextricably to a profound and lifelong meditation on what it means to be free. Truly free.”

“…As a teenager I wondered, and I wonder still, are we free now? And if so, free to do what? Was our ancestors’ ancient struggle for liberation realized in 1964 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act? Or in ’65 with the Voting Rights Act? Or are the pointed questions of W.E.B. Du Bois in his address ‘Criteria of Negro Art’ — ‘What do we want? What is the thing we are after?’ — even more urgent today, and less easy to answer, than when African-Americans were blatantly denied basic, human rights and treated as pariahs?’”

“…‘There has been progress,’ Johnson quotes Du Bois, ‘and we can see it day by day looking back along blood-filled paths … But when gradually the vista widens and you begin to see the world at your feet and the far horizon, then it is time to know more precisely whither you are going and what you really want.’”