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Shifting rhythms

Saturday, August 27th, 2011

Shifting rhythms

It was a Friday evening in late summer, and a father led his young daughter to the edge of the water, where their wooden row boat waited. He had just returned from a harrowing week at work, yet when he slipped his life vest on, picked up the oars, and took his daughter’s soft hand into his own, he felt able to leave the cacophony of the week behind.

He perched her on the stern of the row boat and heaved the oars into the still swimmable water of late August. The little girl’s whispy blonde locks fluttered in the draught, created by the movement of the boat through the water. She chirped her thoughts to her father, explaining to him from her child’s perspective all that she beheld. Under his hat, her father smiled irrepressibly, occasionally acknowledging her magical description of the world around.

The boat glid into a wide bay, and suddenly one could hear an almost deafening noise from the skies. Despite the warmth still in the air and the water, the Canada geese knew that it was time to go. Late summer was deceptive - it could fool you into believing that this would last forever. Yet, the Canada geese were the wiser and had taken to the skies in droves.

The gigantic flock now landed all around the row boat. The young girl shrieked with delight as the geese blanketed the surface of the water with their presence. The father pulled in the oars to allow the birds to land all around them. As the geese clucked to one another things that no one could understand, father and daughter laughed, listened, and tried to imagine the mutterings of the migrating flock.

The dock was a slippery green under my feet, another indication of the coming autumn. I had slipped on my bathrobe and trudged through the path towards our local “beach” with Lucy the dog, who stopped to sniff at the first apples that had fallen to the ground. This was my shift from the onslaught of work I had left behind in the working week. It was still summer and so I didn’t bother about whether anyone thought that walking through the street in a bathrobe was appropriate. Most people in our neighborhood understood.

Now at the end of the dock, I beheld a father and his young daughter in a boat in a sea of geese. The evening sun shone a soft, even warmth upon them that seemed unreal with the thought of autumn just around the corner. Lucy and I did our lap, back and forth to the sail boat moored at a nearby shore. The troubles of the week were gone, washed away in the even cool of the lake.

As we approached home, I picked an apple from one of the neighbor’s trees and bit in. You had to offer assistance in consuming some of the apples in the neighborhood at this time of year: people couldn’t use them all up in cider and preserves. Down the road, I saw the father and the daughter walking home, hand in hand, with their lifejackets on, lively in conversation. It had been an evening of wonder, but mostly a needed shifting of rhythm and the chance to remember the dignity in living.

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Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island.

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Tags: Autumn, Boating, late summer, recreation, Swimming
Posted in Apples, Autumn, Balance, Boating, Food and Health, New Thinking, Outdoor Activity, Season, Summer, Swimming, children | 11 comments »

Island of love, hope and humanity

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

A place that everyone can believe in

They boarded the bus to visit the camp site on the idyllic island near their temporary quarters. Mother, father, and four children had fled from Iraq and were staying in the country-side. Here, they waited to learn whether they would be allowed to stay in this country, where they needn’t fear for their lives each day. In order to break the agony of waiting for that day of judgement, the parents had decided to take their children fishing at a nearby waterfront camp site, where one could stand on the long docks and cast a line out towards the horizon. It was a beautiful evening: one that offered the hope of forgetting, even if just for a few short hours, so that the young ones could catch a glimpse of how childhood could be. All of them longed for their homeland, but it was too dangerous a place to be in. They told themselves that there were beautiful experiences to be had in this new land, to which they had reluctantly fled.

As they boarded, the bus driver – a local woman with family roots in the area – greeted them. The youngsters responded in the local language and held out their tickets. The parents remained silent behind their children, embarrassed that they had not yet picked up this language that was in every way foreign to their own. The bus driver looked into each of the children’s faces and smiled at them. She had children of her own and knew that these young ones had been through experiences that she could not imagine. She acknowledged the parents, thinking how bizarre it was to believe that her country’s problems were created by them.

The family disembarked from the bus and walked down the long path that cut through the middle of the camp site. To their left and right, they saw people enjoying the still summer evening outside their trailers and tents. The mood was open and friendly. No one stared at the outsiders, or, for that matter, thought of them as outsiders. This was a place for anyone who loved nature and the sound of the crickets as night fell.

Children playing football near one of the trailers kicked their ball in the direction of the Iraqi children. At first, the newcomers were afraid to kick back, not because they couldn’t play football (a national sport in their country), but because they had been told by their parents to keep a low profile. Ignoring their advice, the most forward of the children took a gigantic kick and sent the ball flying back. The children at the camp site cheered.

There were many boats moored at the long docks. The family walked quietly past them to the end of one of the docks and cast their lines toward the horizon. This evening it was in various hues of fuschia, orange, and yellow, no different than the sunset in Iraq. The boaters, many of whom were drinking coffee after dinner or having a night cap, watched the night entertainment with interest. Would they or wouldn’t they catch a fish? After an hour or so, one of the boaters emerged from her boat and offered the parents some coffee and biscuits, which they gladly accepted. The children’s eyes were wide with delight, as the boater offered them some cordial, and, most importantly, biscuits.

A fish bit onto one of the hooks, and the boaters collectively held their breaths. After an extensive struggle, the fish got away. The silence was broken by the father of the children, who began to laugh. It was the kind of laughter loaded with the relief that there were good people here, and that life still had its beautiful moments. The boaters thought it infectious and began to laugh along. The parents looked back at the boats as their children continued to fish. For the first time, they felt a commonness with these people, who could laugh with them, sit in suspense with them, and share in the universal love of children.

I was one of the boaters this evening, and I know that this is how it can be on a Nordic island. Here, love, hope and humanity are so great, that there is no room for anything else.

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Written in memory of the victims of the Oslo and Utøya tragedies.

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Tags: hope, humanity, islands, love, Norway, Sweden
Posted in Boating, Camping, Inclusion, Integration, Island, Landscape, New Thinking, Nordic Countries other than Sweden, Norway, Openness, Outdoor Activity, Positive Thinking, Season, Summer, children | 1 comment »

Inferno online

Sunday, January 16th, 2011

slippery...

The rain falls onto the thick snow and I am forced to rely on the ice grips under my shoes to stop me from slipping. Despite the fact that the linden alley path which cuts through the palace grounds is fit for a curling competition, Lucy the dog and I make our way down it, nimbly placing each paw in the hope that it won’t slip away and leave us on our bellies.

This week I’ve been struck by another slippery issue which I’ve finally decided I seriously have to get my ice grips into. On Wednesday evening as I was touching my toes in front of SVT 2, I found myself increasingly engrossed by a program about the way that companies target children as consumers. A good part of the program was devoted to research done on kids in order to encourage the purchase of television games. On reflection, ‘engrossed’ is probably not quite the right word to describe the way that I began to feel about 20 minutes into the program. Queezy is a better description.

One of the grim studies that companies conducted was a blink test. As soon as a child using one of the companies’ TV games blinked, the level of violence in the game was upped. Blinking apparently increases the chance that the child will take a break from the game and then lose interest in it. New research is showing that violence (not to mention other negative aspects) in these games is now suspected of leading to a much wider range of physical and psychological disorders than previously expected.

Filled with an acute sense of horror, I switched off the television and hurried along to my son’s room. My son is a peace-loving, Donald Duck infatuated sort of kid and so naively I hoped that he had not partaken in the violent games. My daughter’s interest in television games is minimal and I so I wasn’t quite as concerned about her in this respect.

“Do you have any scary TV games?” I asked my son desperately. He had just bought himself a used XBox 360 on Blocket, a package which was accompanied by the leftover games of its previous user. “Well…..hmmmm….OK, yes I guess so….but I don’t really like them,” he said with astonishing openness. “How about we put those away and get a couple of new, non-violent games today second-hand at the game shop?” I suggested. “OK, but my friends have invited me over to IO,” he confessed with uncertainty in his voice,”do you think I can go?” “What is IO?” I asked. “I’m not really sure what it is, but everyone goes there,” he said.

Some quick research revealed that IO is Inferno Online, Europe’s largest gaming center located right in the heart of Stockholm. Was it really a good idea for a gang of unaccompanied 10-12 year old boys to go there on their own? It seemed to me that this was simply a place where they could go to play games that their parents had forbidden them from playing at home. And there was my slippery dilemma: if I banned things at home my son might seek them out somewhere else, in an environment that wasn’t where he should be at his tender age.

In a funny sort of way my visible hesitation and concern relieved my son from the feeling that he had to go along with the crowd. Within a few minutes we were off to the game shop together to try to find those nonviolent games. We scoured the shelves but out of a selection of countless games, we found only three that might suit the description of non-violent without being Teletubbies. It was a sobering experience.

On the way home I learned a great deal about games from my son. “Once upon a time men used to hunt all the time, you know, Mamma. But now we cannot hunt any more and so we need these games. Women were different since they just looked after the kids and sorted nuts and berries. They don’t need games – you know, like Jessie (his twin sister).” I was startled at this sharp analysis of male’s need for games in which some form of hunting and killing takes place. We discussed the difference between real killing for survival and virtual killing for fun. It was an eye-opening discussion.

Sometime soon we are off to IO. I promised myself that I would visit the place with my son to learn more about this culture that no responsible parent can afford not to know about. Looks like I’m in for a slippery ride.

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Remember to drop in to visit me elsewhere on the Internet at www.julielindahl.com, www.lettersfromtheisland.com, www.berattelser.se and at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Tags: children, ice, tv games, violence
Posted in Technology and Health, children | 10 comments »

Crisp thoughts in minus thirteen

Monday, December 13th, 2010

Time for thinking, not talking

The snow crunched that dry cold crunch under my boot soles as the morning sun hit the east facing side of the palace. It was one of those winter mornings that no sane mind would trade in for a day on the beach in Thailand. Lucy tip-toed on the freezing ground at first but then got into her stride as she too was taken by the pure gloriousness of this morning in our mutual playground, Drottningholm Park.

Out on dog island, an enclosure where dogs can socialize, doggie masters and mistresses urged their pets to get on with their morning ablutions so that they could return to the warmth of their blazing fireplaces. Lucy and I prefer not to go there (alright, I prefer not to go there) as it means that I have to talk and therefore cannot use these invaluable early hours to toss around thoughts and consider the connections. I don’t know whether it is just the effect of a decade lived on an isolated island of my own (read more about this in the page about this blog), but I often think that people talk too much and reflect too little. Meetings, meetings, blaa, blaa, but where is the possibility to work out what it all means and to process it?

This morning my thoughts were definitely with the group of children I’d recently been working with at school. This and other projects I’ve been working on during the past year through my NGO (check www.berattelser.se which will shortly be available in English language) have drawn my attention to how we handle integration; how we handle kids who come from war-torn countries and whose learning capacity as well as capacity for concentration has been affected by events that most of us cannot even begin to imagine; how we talk to their parents who want to participate in their children’s schooling but don’t know how to begin to do that in a society that seems to have tight systems for everything; how we get all children in Sweden to be curious about cultures that they are not familiar with rather than scared of them.

As the day went on I found myself watching what is possibly Sweden’s most remarkable St. Lucia concert at the Ericsson Globe. 1000 candles are literally lit by countless youngsters from some of Sweden’s most prestigious music schools who sing Swedish songs of the season. I’ve been to this concert before and remember it as an experience that made me believe in this world again. While I thought it was superb again this year, something new struck me. Among the large number of children performing, almost all of the faces were white. This is not a criticism, simply an observation that hit hard after months of working in schools and increasing my awareness of the real Swedish student body. Where were they: the different colors that increasingly represent the place that Sweden is today? I couldn’t find them although I searched the performing crowd meticulously.

At day’s end I watched a bit of the endless media analysis of the terrible event in Stockholm on Saturday evening. You can read more about it elsewhere on this site. A senior journalist interviewed a panel of experts, asking them what could be done in the future to prevent such acts happening again. Most could only come with answers such as “keep a cool head”, “don’t over-react”, etc. The imam on the panel was in fact the only person who came up with anything close to what is needed: organized discussion among young people – an opportunity to vent frustrations and views that are based on anger and fear.

For myself, I had so many answers based on my experiences in schools, that I found myself shouting at the television. So, I guess I have some thoughts to sort out tomorrow morning in the park in the glistening winter sun. You got the uncut version (feel free to take whatever you like, WikiLeaks).

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Learn more about my work at schools at www.berattelser.se and stay tuned for the English language version. You can also learn more about my writing projects at www.julielindahl.com.

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Tags: children, Integration, schools, Winter
Posted in Integration, Season, Winter, children | 8 comments »

Love is sweeter than candy

Sunday, November 14th, 2010

An alternative for celebrating the holiday season

I’ve noticed that we are getting into that time of year when the consumption of sweet foods hits an all-time high. Swedish supermarkets have been revelling in the fact that with each year that passes, Swedish children start the holiday season ever-earlier. Sadly, they’ve adopted the Halloween habit which is a part of the story of how American children got into so much trouble healthwise. From here on out, until the last wrappers are opened at Easter, it’s one big sugar rush all the way.

This isn’t the first time that I have written about that big enemy of the people: vast quantities of sugar. However, something happened during this past week that draws my attention back to sugar and children’s apparently increasing need for it. During one of my story-telling sessions at a school, the children began to draw a world full of sweets. It’s not the first time that I have seen this. In fact, I am ready to bet that eight times out of ten if you give Swedish kids (or any others living in a modern society) the opportunity to start drawing their favorite fantasy world, they will start with vast quantities of chocolate and sweets. As an adult I can delude myself that it is sort of fun and cute until I look at the statistics for children’s health. Kids are suffering. Rates of diabetes 2 are increasing steadily. Kids need adults who are aware to help them out of this dangerous jungle, which is becoming more lethal by the day.

As I stood waiting in the evening queue at the supermarket this week, I noticed bags of huge pink and yellow marshmallow twirls piled up as high as my waist. The cynical strategy behind their placement near the check-out is that tired parents will always choose to appease their children whom they haven’t seen all day by throwing them into the basket. Now we’re getting to the nub of this problem, I thought. Parents today feel that they need to appease their kids – to somehow make up to them in sugar what they haven’t quite managed in time and affection. “Of course – sugar is on a continuum with alcohol,” a very intelligent person I know said. Since this person I know is adored by children everywhere (he is a professional clown), I trust his judgement, and just a moment’s reflection will tell you that he is quite right. If you won’t give your child a bottle of schnapps, why would you give them a bag of sweets?

Last week Swedes were left gaping at a new program about how we spoil our children and thereby ruin them. Not having much time to watch television, I’ve caught snippets. I do hope they’ll be taking up the issue of sugar (probably not is my guess). Diabetes is a disease that damages the functioning of the heart, among other organs. Can it be more obvious that a little love in the form of an apple consumed together might not only save our children from a great deal of grief, but also fulfill the real source of their need?

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Tags: candy, children, diabetes, love, parents, sweets
Posted in Apples, Food and Health, New Thinking, Story-telling, children | 5 comments »

Let men be men

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

Being a man

This was one of those Sunday mornings that defied all of the cliches about November mornings in Sweden. As I walked down the hill with Lucy the dog, the bright sun stroked my eyelids like a therapist massaging tired muscles. The last yellow leaves that still hung on the branches were like golden jewelry on a woman dressed in strict gray. As we passed one tree which still had relatively many leaves, they detatched and began to fall to the ground in great hoards. Lucy and I watched, mesmerized at the way that great robust trees undress rather than dress as winter approaches. The deer and moose had fled the farmland behind the palace grounds where they normally grazed during the warmer season. Now they were desperately hiding behind the conifers in the forest, away from the sights of men who are free to hunt them in the November sun.

The outdoors can be a harsh place to be during this season, but today sitting inside drying out next to a heater was simply all wrong. As I walked in the front door with Lucy I could already hear my son and his friend playing their latest TV game snuggled up in bed. I caught a glance at the two of them through the slit between the door and the doorway. The spoils of the night were many. There were sweet wrappers all over the floor. Somewhere in the corner the inner tinsel of an empty bag of chips reflected in the sunlight that struggled to enter the room from behind the closed curtains. Kids have to be allowed to be kids, I told myself, but how much do these guys really benefit from this sort of experience? From my previous blog entries you already know that I am one of those horrid mothers that never purchases sweets or chips – not even on a Friday. I also give my kids a lot of ’stick’ about sitting in front of screens for too long. Sometimes I wonder whether their friends think that I am from the Stone Age or another planet. They look at me like that occasionally.

Most of all, I wonder what all of the passive sitting and staring, and consumption of vast quantities of sugar and salt does to boys who are otherwise naturally exploding with energy. What do they do with their instinctive need to burn it off? Basically, I’ve been giving some thought to maleness. Being a woman I accept that I will never really have any first-hand insight into the matter. At the same time (and rather ironically) I find myself in the position of having to help the young males who ‘hang out’ in my home to get out and be males.

The subject has also been on my mind since last week I took my son to the Skateboard Park at Fryshuset, a head-turning place which is currently the largest youth center in the world. As we entered the first of two big halls filled with ramps for doing tricks that definitely should be reserved for young males, I plugged my ears. No one seemed to be bothered by the noise of at least fifty skateboards hitting up against ramps and walls. It struck me that in this culture which I wasn’t at all used to, a special social agreement governed. Everyone pursued their own energy and physical limits to the max but no one confronted anyone else with it. There was an own sense of peace and order which was nothing short of miraculous in a place where the energy level could have given rise to pure aggression at any moment.

The young men who ran the check-in counter treated the boys who paid their entry fees seriously. Accompanying mothers who attempted to speak on their sons’ behalf were respectfully ignored. Passing that check-in counter was a ritual in responsibility for any boy. They could just as well have put up a sign saying, “here we are males who agree to exercise our full energies AND be good to one another.” There were a few girls here and there, but not many. Essentially, this was a male place.

On my night desk I have a book written by the founder of Fryshuset, a man called Anders Carlberg. After the day at the Skateboard Park, it didn’t surprise me that in this book (“Generationsklyftan hotar demokratin”, Hjalmarson & Högberg, 2002) he wrote, among other things, about maleness and the need to create opportunities for channeling this energy in our society. I take the liberty of translating a line that is beginning to make increasing sense to me: “So that boys can develop to become responsible, grown men they need to be allowed to develop positive male traits.” I thought of the boys at the schools I’d been working in. Yes, we would solve a lot of problems by giving this subject a bit more thought.

This Sunday ended as gracefully as it began. As the afternoon sun began to move towards the horizon I set out for a run. The grumpy elderly man who barely ever talks to anyone on his daily walk through the park shouted out as I ran past him: “Faster, faster, I say!” I grinned and waved. Even old men have a strong and entirely healthy need to be male.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Tags: boys, Fryshuset, men, skateboarding
Posted in Autumn, Culture and Health, Season, children | 8 comments »

Roses bloom in October too

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

Little rebel

The rain hit the lawns and turned the first snow into tiny islands of white. It has been a week when the usual chaos of the first snow ensues. We know that it will come each year, but each time is as shocking as the last. The radio blurts out interviews with people relieving themselves of the shock by blaming the chaos of the weather on somebody else: “they should have done this,” “they should have done that,” they say. Yes, but weather is weather and each of us bears some responsibility when it comes.

This Sunday morning the rain is restoring some of the autumn. The fallen leaves have become visible again from under a thin cover of snow and provide a small respite before the inevitable happens and we head full throttle for Christmas. In my garden the roses refuse to give up. I love them for this. There is something extremely freeing about watching a rose bloom in the cold north in late October. As Lucy the dog and I head out for our morning stroll in the rain, the petals grin with the resilience of rebels. Out on the paths a group of Sunday morning backpackers unbelievably sets off for a hike in the forest behind the palace just as the rain intensifies. I catch a glimpse of their faces as I walk past them. They remind me of my roses.

This week our home seems constantly full of other rebels after school hours. Our children are in that twilight zone between childhood and teenager-ness (they are 12), and so are their friends. We’re never quite sure exactly what they are going to get up to next but at least they are doing it at home. It goes without saying that my favorite yogurt and juice is always gone before I can so much as catch a glimpse of it. The laundry baskets are overflowing with bed sheets used by kids staying over. No one thinks to use them twice. The furniture is rearranged in a way that I don’t recall placing it. Yet whenever I hear the peal of children’s laughter and the scrambling of intense play (all of the time), I can live with all of the symptoms of a household overflowing with young rebels.

As a parent one watches this age with a lump in one’s throat. The child for whom you were once the center of attention is suddenly looking out into the world and seeking new forms of belonging. Belonging is one of those primal instincts that drives our behavior. It is like food or the instinct to reproduce ourselves; we seek it irrespective of logic, and sometimes to our detriment. Yesterday’s radio program about a man who as a child was drawn into a criminal gang because the other options for belonging (family, school) were so weak that they didn’t offer an appealing option, struck me hard in this respect. The thing that eventually saved this young rebel, who landed himself in juvenile care on several occasions, was a coach in a football team who was not afraid of putting his arms around this young man and making him feel a part of something more appealing than a criminal gang.

Perhaps I am not thinking so much of my own children when I hear this story, as of some of the children I have met through my various children’s projects over the years. In every group are at least two children out of ten who are viewed as having special challenges. These can range from learning disabilities to aggression. Many of these kids feel that they are not a part of the group and will never be (therefore they must seek other groups outside of school). I’ve noticed that when these children are given the opportunity to learn in a way that allows them to express themselves and feel that they are heard by others, they tend not only to participate but also to shine with the consequence that the whole group is lifted. This is not the way that learning generally happens in our schools which are still primarily governed by the idea that children should learn quietly at their desks by having information passed down to them.

One of the greatest challenges that our modern societies face is how to include these children who otherwise may go on to pursue their need for belonging in ways that become problematic for them and for the whole society. My own feeling is that opening up as many opportunities as we can to include them at schools – not as special needs but as a part of the group – will take us a long way. Perhaps the reason that my roses are blooming despite all at the end of October is because I actually see them.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Tags: Autumn, Belonging, children, Inclusion, rain, schools, snow, Winter
Posted in Autumn, Belonging, Inclusion, New Thinking, Season, children | 5 comments »

The forgotten island of the individual

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

Submitting to winter

The leaves have turned to crystal wafers. The winter has caught them just as they were rolling up to dry. When the October midday sun comes they’ll dampen down in the melted crystal and start their long process of becoming a part of the muddy ground. A thin crust of ice covers the ponds in the park. The birds that haven’t migrated swoop down to drink but cannot find a way in. They’ll have to settle for the lake outside of the royal palace which is still open, though covered in the morning mist that plays games with their vision.

As winter approaches in Sweden there is very little to do but to submit. Under the guise of mastering the season with our simmering stews, lit fires and thick-soled boots we play along and deep down know that we will always be the pipers playing to King Winter as the darkness and cold descend. There is nothing wrong with being submissive to nature during this season. In fact, it can be quite cozy and it is probably healthy for us to get away from our hubris – the notion that man has or will somehow become the master of nature.

However, out and about among the young of Swedish society this week, I’ve noticed a kind of submission that disturbs me. As I continue to help children to create stories at school, it strikes me that so many feel pressed to fit into a world that really isn’t their own from a very young age. The child that wants to draw angels feels pressed to draw beer bottles because that is the world that it lives in. The child that is curious about other places in the world feels pressed to make racist comments because that is what it takes to be cool at the moment. The child that revels in the fresh, clear autumn air feels pressed to take a puff.

Apparently we are living in the age of the individual, but in the shards of the collective that children sometimes reproduce as they tell their stories it seems that the reverse is in danger of happening. Children are in many ways a mirror upon our society: they tell us where we are at. This tells me that we are deluding ourselves if we think that we live in the age of the individual. We have a great deal of work to do to give children the wherewithal to reveal who they really are and to stand up to forces that bear no relation to the world that our children would like to live in.

With this challenge in mind, it is perhaps no coincidence that there has been a sudden swell of interest in story-telling; our own stories, not those of others, that is. Just this past weekend The Fabula Festival in Stockholm highlighted the value of this ancient art to our society. Most of all, it is a way for us to express our own worlds – those forgotten islands of our own hidden longings where the spectrum of colors is rich and diverse.

Lucy the dog rushes to greet yet another visitor to the park. She must be the only dog in this park that everyone – even those afraid of dogs – seems to be pleased to meet. “Isn’t it amazing how similar people are to their dogs,” my husband comments, looking at a woman with frizzy tufts of big hair walking her poodle. My thought is that it would be an honor to be like Lucy. This wonderful creature seems hell-bent on expressing her joy, which pours in generous floods from her very heart, and never submitting to any prevailing glumness or indifference.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Posted in Autumn, Landscape, Park, Season, Story-telling, children | 15 comments »

Fighting an instant autumn

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

What does listening to this do to you?

We’re past the autumn equinox and things are actually still OK. It’s like getting to what you fear will be your worst moment and then realizing afterwards that it wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, this Sunday morning’s thoughts about the week gone by are colored by the breathtaking palette of yellows, auburns and deep greens in which I find myself. We’ve come back to our island in the wilderness for the weekend to prepare the garden for the spring. The air is cool but there is no bite in it and the roses are lovelier now than they have been throughout the entire warm season. Like tragic heroes, they continue to yield new buds against the rising tide of their winter fate.

This morning when I swung open the laundry room door (the back door to the house that faces east to the rising sun) the first thing that I heard was the rustling of leaves in the birch forest behind the house. They sounded like a woman’s ball gown swirling on the dance floor. I had almost forgotten this sound of the rustling leaves and stood there for a few minutes in the morning sunlight filling my senses with it. My generation had not understood the importance of hearing that sound. We had been obsessed by Wall Street and the revving engine of a flashy new sports car.

I thought of the children I met in the school yards where I worked this week. I wondered whether they were further or closer than my generation to being able to hear the sound of the rustling birch. I dislike being a pessimist but based on what I have seen and heard, further away is my guess. These children are growing up in a world where the idea of “instant” governs. Food, friends and gratification should be instant otherwise there is stress, frustration, irritation and, even worse, aggression. I have to admit that I like instant when it comes to health care but in many facets of life it is an obstacle to happiness. To be able to listen to the sound of the wind in the leaves you have to be able to let go of “instant” and value a tree that has taken a long time to develop its rich foliage. There is a tremendous satisfaction in that. You have to appreciate the ideas of ‘gradual’ and ‘cyclical’ so that when the sound of the leaves is gone for a while in the winter you have the confidence that it will come again.

“What type of society are we living in when people cannot read past the first line because one complete sentence is too many?” asked a teacher at a school I am working at in frustration at the difficulty of getting a response from today’s parents. Perhaps we have too many incomplete sentences without substance, I thought, reflecting on the rash of meaningless words out there on Facebook and Twitter. What happens when we are forced to be so instant that we are barely communicating? My sense is that we can see some of the answers playing themselves out in our school yards.

Last week I finally managed to complete the annual migration of the winter jackets and boots from the basement back into the storage space near our front door. Each year as the temperatures sink and our toes begin to freeze I realize that I am once again overdue with this little chore which wouldn’t be a problem if only my desk wasn’t piled so high with work. Next week we don’t have to flee indoors any more. I can stand in the park with Lucy the dog in my sturdy, warm boots and duffle coat and try, amid the morning traffic, to tune into the sound of the last rustling leaves of the season.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter where I too communicate in incomplete sentences!

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Tags: Autumn, birch, children, gradual, instant, schools
Posted in Autumn, New Thinking, Openness, Season, Slow, children | 1 comment »

Telling our own stories

Monday, May 24th, 2010

What story will she tell?

A successful Swedish musician was recently quoted as saying, ” listen to what they say in (television program) Idol and do the reverse! That is my recipe for success.” This comment felt like a sprinkling of cool water in a desert of programs being broadcast by the main Swedish television channels which portray merciless competition as something to be desired. In a society with a reputation for leaving no one behind and which prizes the “lagom” (ordinary), I find this rash of inhumane programs to be puzzling, to say the least. Do some influential people working in Swedish television have a pent-up longing for an unjust society?

While the American side of me says that there is nothing wrong with a bit of healthy competition and ambitious goals, I’m getting tired of watching people being put down for show. The Romans did it in the Colosseum by throwing slaves and Christians to starving wild animals, but I thought that we had got past those bad old days. In some ways, we have a more complicated problem on our hands now than ever in the past since wherever we turn, wherever we look, this sad old story is being retold a hundred times by our screens and billboards.

Since the time that people have been able to communicate with one another in an intelligent way, story-telling has been our means for creating culture. One story passed down to the next generation is the starting point of that generation’s values and perceptions. In the past ordinary people - grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers - passed on the stories of families and of the land. Today a comparatively small number of people who believe that we want to watch others being reduced tell us a great many of the stories that shape our values, in particular those of our children. We have greater possibilities to tell our stories and to shape the way that we want our society to be than ever before but the vast majority today are assimilators rather than story-tellers.

Incensed by this situation and the ever-lengthening cues for children needing psychiatric help, I began a project this spring with a few other like-minded women to help children recapture the art of story-telling in Swedish schools. Within a few weeks, I found myself in a classroom with sixteen 11-year-olds telling a story about what it means to help another person feel that they are good enough. This is a tricky subject at best, particularly with all of the Colosseum-style television programs that these children are aware of. Soon we found ourselves in a fantasy world of dwarfs and talking suns which revolved around one true story: if you give a person the chance to show you who they are on their own terms they will usually exceed all of your expectations.

As the children wound their tales it struck me that through this collective effort to recapture an ancient art and make it new we could begin as a society to express the world that we want to live in. It’s the reverse of Idol and I do believe that it is a recipe for the sort of success that most of us would like to be a part of.

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If you are an individual or organization that would like to see this project expand and flourish or simply would like more information, please contact me at info@julielindahl.com.

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Tags: children, Idol, stories, Swedish television
Posted in Culture and Health, New Thinking, Story-telling, children | 2 comments »