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Language not words

Sunday, December 11th, 2011

Language without words

Words without language, language without words. It is the main thought that has stayed with me from the annual Nobel ceremonies in Stockholm yesterday. Watching a man, debilitated by disease and the passing of time, sweeping the stakes and making the most important statement of the night was an experience that went amiss on no one. Tomas Tranströmer embodied the meaning of his poem, even without reading it himself. His wife of a half a century read it for the gathered dignitaries, but all of the time, Tranströmer, there in his wheel chair, barely able to conjure a facial expression as a result of stroke, was the living expression of his meaning. He had become language without words.

For anyone who is a writer or artist, the recognition of this moment happening for another writer or artist is a moment of unbridled joy and bottomless tragedy. It is like watching someone pass into air and become a part of an ethereal light of all voices that have found language and risen above words. One longs to journey with them, to escape barriers and constraining forms, and simply to be in a state in which thought is unimpeded by grammar, spelling and punctuation.

This writer’s dilemma is, in some ways, the very same challenge that everyone faces in life. Each of us longs for a seamlessness and a flow, where nothing is forced and a meaning that speaks to each of us is ever-present. When meaning, that is, language leaves and there is only form, or words, we become dissatisfied and wander in circles asking why we are here. Many of us do that these days, if not every day then certainly from time to time. Living in the flow of language and experience is where we want to be, need to be, but that requires a great deal of courage in our society, where our ears are filled with words that can become stifling in their number and impede free and productive thought that means something.

The truth is, my heart ached when I listened to Tranströmer last night, mainly because he confirmed my thoughts and I knew that I wasn’t mad. His poem summarized the feelings that came to me when I moved from a small, isolated island where I had lived for almost a decade back closer to the city. The beautiful silence in which I had found so much richness and harmony suddenly was filled with words in quantity, rather than language in quality.

One shouldn’t be too critical. Meetings between people are important and can give rise to forces that can energize and change the world. Where Tranströmer can help us, however, is to improve the quality of those meetings by expressing what we actually mean and seeking to set free the personal language of those we encounter. It may well be in language, not words, that we find the peace that we seek.

Tranströmer’s poem from March ‘79 in translation:

Tired of all who come with words, words but no language
l went to the snow-covered island.
The wild does not have words.
The unwritten pages spread out on all sides!
I come upon the tracks of roe deer in the snow.
Language but no words.

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Wondering what to give a friend or loved one for Christmas? Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island. Order it now from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk , Author House, authorhouse.co.uk and many other online bookstores. Other books by Julie Lindahl available are: Letters from the Island (listen also to Julie’s podcasts from this site) and On My Swedish Island: Discovering the Secrets of Scandinavian Well-being.

Julie Lindahl is chairperson at Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.

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Tags: Language, Nobel Laureate, Tomas Tranströmer, words
Posted in Island, Landscape, New Thinking, Openness | 4 comments »

“Mamma” is home

Monday, November 14th, 2011

A little piece of Africa at home in Sweden

“Goodbye, Mamma,” the immigration official smiled and held out our passports. Then it was through the looking glass into that odd space - the waiting room and flights between countries - until I stepped out into the brisk, clear hallways of Arlanda Airport. There I had been “Mamma,” someone who had earned a title of respect for bearing children. Here I was an identification number with equal rights. I felt confused. Which one did I want?

It is a difficult question for me. I grew up in several places where chaos, heat and respectful titles for women who had borne children – especially many children or more than one at the same time – were the rule. People smiled wide smiles despite the fact that poverty governed. There was color, rhythmical music, and fascinating mystical beliefs in the spirits and fates. The fine, white sand formed itself in between my toes and the aquamarine salt water washed up to recapture the shore. The sea regurgitated small shells that were like jewels on white felt. There were the daily smells of dirt and rotting in the heat, but there was also the sweetness of the frangipani flowers and the mild taste of coconut water. All of these things lived like dormant small creatures in my memory from the beginning of life in such places, but my chosen home in Sweden was nothing like this.

In the yard, busying myself about the fallen leaves on the day after returning from Africa, the light was quickly fading. It was 3.30 in the afternoon. It was a good feeling to be wearing a sweater against my warm tan. A few roses still bloomed, as though to provide a soft reintroduction to my adopted home in the cold North. The sign for the annual Christmas market had gone up across the road, and people walked home to prepare an early dinner with advent wreaths in hand.

The walkways of the park were clear and airy. There was no opportunity for anything to rot with the frost slowly encroaching upon the early mornings. Still, Lucy the dog managed to find a rotten thing or two to sniff at. She was overjoyed to have us home. I imagined her in the heat of my childhood and my recent trip to Africa. This wouldn’t suit her at all. She was like the children – a born and bred Swede – who withered in the midday sun and humidity of the tropics, and who lived up when the chaos subsided and things became peaceful and even, like the delicate browns, greys and whites of beloved Swedish linen.

I should not complain. I was lucky to live here in a place where I could drink the tap water and where someone would be there to care for me if everything went wrong. “Away is good, but home is best.” This was the conclusion of my son’s school report concerning his travels. “It’s wonderful to be home, Mamma,” he declared, ecstatic that he could once again go to the refrigerator and find the grevé cheese. Here I am “Mamma” too, but only in the quiet crucible of my family. Outside of it I must be many other things. Africa seemed to offer me a simple way out of many complex identities or perhaps this was just a mirage in the sun. Wherever there was life, there was complexity and contradiction. Wherever we were, it was our task to make them whole.

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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. Other books by Julie Lindahl available are: Letters from the Island (listen also to Julie’s podcasts from this site) and On My Swedish Island: Discovering the Secrets of Scandinavian Well-being.

Julie Lindahl is chairperson at Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.

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Tags: Africa, home, Sweden, travel
Posted in Belonging, New Thinking | 2 comments »

A most interesting tree

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

Why are you here?

Sometimes the week can begin to seem rather gnarled. Time passes and one wonders: Where did I get to this week – what did I actually achieve? I look at my to-do list and see that about half of it is checked off. There are some to-dos that are beginning to look like old knots in trees and then there are those new shoots that have suddenly sprung up in the most unexpected places and mischievously redirected the energy needed to grow.

That question, “Have you achieved what you wanted to – have you succeeded?” is puzzling at week’s end. For whom? At what level? At the level of my to-do list, my bank account, my family, my community, or the country I live in? How about the planet and humanity? Thinking about these questions can either bring great clarity and perspective, or it can bring up that difficult question of “why am I here?”

This biggest and most difficult of questions was one surrounding us at a conference I attended yesterday run by the government of Sweden concerning how to bring about greater integration in this country. The only problem is that no one who ran the conference saw this question, which felt something like a very colorful and remarkable bird chirping up in the branches with no one noticing it because they all had their eyes on the ground. After this summer’s tragedy in Norway, which highlighted the need for more innovative thinking about this challenge in the Nordics in general, it seemed that this conference had a more urgent mission than it might otherwise have had. Unfortunately, it collapsed into the specific research interests of a handful of academics who, although working with the best of intentions, led us all straight for the minutiae, which had been studied a thousand times, and in this way completely lost track of the big question.

As an immigrant trying to become a part of this society, there is one big question that has hovered over me through the 15 years I’ve been here: How can I contribute in a way that suits my interests as well as the needs of people who live here (thus in some way addressing the big question of why I am here)? Finding that intersection can be extremely difficult if other people are not acclimatized to the question. Of course, everyone wants to find that intersection – it is the very thing that fulfils our human need to belong, a need which is critical to our psychological and physical health.

In order to fulfil this need, some years ago I marched into my children’s school and offered my services in reading English language stories to a few of their classes. It seemed to me that an English Literature graduate who was a published author could actually do something useful in a community where English language was required in schools but where it wasn’t a strength of the teachers. At first, there was puzzlement at my readiness to do this and I felt as though I was having to force my way through the classroom door. Eventually, however, I had calls and comments from delighted parents. In this way, eventually I got to know the vast majority of parents and teachers in the school, and thereby most people in my surrounding community. Although my past experiences were a world away from those living in this community, I felt that we had found a meeting point in our interests and that at some level I belonged.

One can, of course, argue that I am an immigrant who is educated, who was able to work as a volunteer and who looks Swedish. All of these things help. However, I don’t believe that any of these factors actually assures that one will feel a sense of belonging. That is a combination of personal will and people in the established community who are open to new ideas of how we can move forward together. Encouraging and facilitating both of these is the way to create a new and valuable sense of belonging. It requires a great deal of creativity – something which Sweden is apparently now number one in the world at, according to Canadian researcher Richard Florida’s new study.

This morning when I walked out into the park with Lucy the dog, I took a good hard look at some of my favorite trees there. I’d seen my week as a bit of a gnarled tree and it seemed a little unfair to all of these great beauties in the park. They were complex with the grooves in their trunks winding in unexpected directions; they had parts that seemed to have grown into them and evidence of the way they had interacted with their environment, creating greater uniqueness and adding special value to the park; some had hideouts in their trunks where animals could find shelter. It seemed to me that these most beautiful and unique of all trees were the way that we wanted our lives and our communities to be. Perhaps ten minutes’ meditation on the image of a most interesting tree would be a good way to start the next conference on integration.

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Julie Lindahl is chairperson at Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.

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Tags: Belonging, Integration, trees
Posted in Belonging, Culture and Health, Landscape, New Thinking, Nordic Countries other than Sweden, Norway, Park | 6 comments »

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 »

Keeping open windows

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

As most in the northern hemisphere don the sunhats and flip-flops, here in Sweden summer is just about over. As I look down the length of the dock, past the hanging birch to the cool water, my heart aches. Here there has been time for reflection, time to sort the important from the unimportant, space to breath. In town, the telephones ring and the car engines rumble as they wait at red lights. Here on this island, the brashness of man’s contraptions is far away, and the colors of summer slowly and gracefully give way to the yellows and browns of the autumn.

During the past days, I’ve been asking myself how to preserve this flow in life, away from my beloved island. How do I keep that feeling of joy at seeing a bird perched on the gate, or experiencing the power that comes from watching the waves as they wander in droves into other parts of this great lake? Since leaving full-time life here, it is a question I have asked myself each year in mid-August, as it becomes evident that this seamless mode of life is about to give way to the tight girdle of autumn schedules.

Yesterday, as a rebellion against all of the things that had to be done in order to begin closing down this place for the cold season ahead, I took a canoe tour with my husband and daughter on the glassy lake. The stillness was a salve on the open wound of having to leave. Sometimes my husband would urge me to row faster or harder, but I resisted, often lifting my oar just to glide and watch the hull peacefully breaking through the even surface.

The water reeds had built up a thick boundary between the water and the forest. One could see the yellowness creeping up their previously all-green stems. It was that golden time when beholding the water reeds, not as individuals but all together, left the impression of a golden ring surrounding each island.

The forest had already begun to smell musty. Raspberry time was over and now one could smell the mushrooms beginning to make their way up after cool evenings and morning dew. This smell disguised the fact that mushrooms actually cleaned the forest floor. It was one of those anomalies that I could never quite resolve. We pulled the canoe up at a dock where, unfortunately, a dead fish floated at the surface. It was a sad sight to see, but we left it there, knowing that some hungry creature in nature would soon take care of it.

Lucy the dog, who had been with us in the canoe, now charged through the trees with tail held high, as though on a great mission. The forest floor was still warm and dry from the summer. It didn’t yet have that feel of cold moisture as one’s shoe sunk into the moss. We picked whatever chantarelles we could find for dinner and climbed back into the canoe. The fish was gone – indeed there was a flow in life here.

Gliding

On the way back, I frequently lifted my oar out of the water and lifted my face to the sky. How beautiful it was to glide under the blue sky. Here there was no beginning and no end, and one lost track of boundaries.

We pulled the canoe up onto our beach and debated as to whether we should lift it to be stored on land. My instincts said, “No, I’ll be out here again before the weather turns.” Eventually, we left the canoe accessible to the beach so that I could retain a little open window for returning to the peace of the water when the autumn weather allowed. Retaining and sometimes climbing through those little open windows is my pledge this autumn, as the mushrooms fill the forest and the colors slowly but gradually turn to white.

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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, Island
Posted in Autumn, Balance, Boating, Island, Landscape, New Thinking, Outdoor Activity, Season | 12 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 »

What are we thinking?

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

The delicate flowers of spring

Lucy the dog and I have gone off the beaten path. We tread through the soft green wisps that have cropped up everywhere on the forest floor like a silk carpet. The lilac, yellow and white flowers that flourish in the shade of the trees in May tickle my ankles to catch my attention. We can marvel at the big peonies and roses of the summer, but these delicate flowers of spring are more graceful and more moving because of their determination to rise up despite all of the odds: the iron nights of spring, the mud of April and May, and people with their dogs who long to trample upon the greenery as soon as it emerges.

Lucy digs furiously at the base of a tree where obviously some poor unsuspecting creature has made its home. While I fully expect that someday something angry is going to bite her nose off, on this occasion I let her take her fate into her own hands – or should I say paws? Amid the delicate flowers and the blades of young grass, my eye strikes a large-sized coffee cup from Pressbyrån (the local kiosk), which someone obviously decided they were done with. A little further on, an empty plastic water bottle lies forelorn on the ground with some used white tissues scattered here and there.

I try to reconstruct the story: A woman walking through the park on a sunny May day sipping a cappuccino receives a call from her fiancée who says he has decided to break off their engagement. She drops her cup on the ground in shock and begins to weep, unconsciously throwing her tissues onto the ground, one after the other. In order to calm herself down, she takes out the plastic water bottle from her hand bag, sits on the bench next to the statue and sips water, unable to organize her thoughts and emotions.

I like to construct these types of stories around garbage I see scattered on the ground in public areas, since I want to believe that my fellow person cares but has simply experienced a momentary lapse of responsibility. I want to believe that there are good reasons as to why people leave garbage scattered amid the delicate flowers. In my heart of hearts I am always hoping.

During the summers I sometimes walk around my island with a black garbage bag picking up the debris that visiting sailboats have left at our shores. I remember sitting on a rock with a black garbage bag that was somewhere between full to brimming, and thinking about what this says about developments in our society. Can people be blamed for feeling that the land isn’t theirs, and that the forests and wild shores aren’t really a part of their reality? People live mostly in big cities which create a considerable degree of separation from the earth and its cycles. We have divided the land between us so that we don’t feel a collective responsibility for it. Here in Scandinavia this attitude is somewhat mitigated by customary laws allowing common access to the land and the seas, but signs of lack of common responsibility are nevertheless everywhere to be seen.

I pick up the debris on the ground so that the forest floor is once again a place where people can dream. Our systems have no doubt helped more of us to survive, but they have also weakened our will to take own responsibility. How we encourage that attitude is probably the greatest challenge to cleaning up our planet.

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My new book, Rose in the Sand, a memoir of a decade lived in the Swedish wilderness, will be out shortly. Watch out for it at www.julielindahl.com and join me at Facebook and Twitter. Learn more about my non-profit, Stories for Society, which brings story-telling as a tool for learning and communication into schools. Enjoy my e-magazine at www.nordicwellbeing.com.

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Tags: clean planet, environment, garbage, spring
Posted in AllemannsrÃ¤tt, Conservation, New Thinking, Season, Self-reliance, Spring, nature, sustainability | 7 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 »

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 »