Archive for the ‘New Thinking’ Category
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
Saturday, May 1st, 2010
He's got it, baby, he's got it!
Competition has no doubt taken humankind to new heights. The incentive to be better than the others has frequently resulted in improvements that have revolutionized our quality of life. It isn’t the answer to all of our problems, however, and when it comes to our individual state of health I’m ready to argue that the increasingly dogged devotion to the mentality of competition in our society is becoming a problem. Just switch on your television and feel your spirits being crimped.
As I had just returned from my morning sweat with Lucy the dog on the well-raked paths of Drottningholm Park, my husband lay snugly in bed watching the morning news programme, the hand with the remote control having been the most active part of his body this morning (why can’t I learn to relax?). In the interview couch were some researchers and other social commentators who debated the findings of an earth-shattering new study from Karolinska Institute that suggests young Swedish men are less physically active than their American counterparts. The reverse was true for women and pensioners, both of whom were apparently more active on the Swedish side (why do I believe that?). Swedes were shocked. How could this be? To my mind, the most compelling explanation for this is that organized competitive sport serves a special function in American society. In America, winning at sport can mean paying for a college education. The question no one seems to ask is what happens after college when that incentive falls away? It isn’t for nothing that Mrs. Obama is finally putting what we’ve all been thinking into words: America’s extra weight has become a threat to its national security. The real issue is, how do we get people to be active for life?
My thoughts are with the pensioners. They’re up at eight encouraging one another to take the next step in groups. The value of motion in the outdoors is self-evident to these seventy, eighty and even ninety-year-olds. Getting a move-on in nature is a practice that has frequently been nurtured from an early age in a culture which is unique in the world for having a term for free time non-competitive outdoor life (what a mouthful), “friluftsliv”. One interviewed pensioner is asked why he thinks this sort of activity is a good idea. He smiles and simply answers, “isn’t that self-evident?”
Later in the day I was on the telephone with one of the Nordic region’s leading free-time non-competitive outdoor life experts (check books by Klas Sandell). “Do we really have to organize all sorts of competitive incentives to attract our boys to be physically active?” I asked. After all, this sort of thing doesn’t come close to having the same overall wellbeing value as undirected physical activity in the outdoors. Aren’t we risking deleting widespread voluntary physical activity, particularly for young men, forever? We had to be careful about our objectives of our competitive incentives my expert thought. If they build a bridge to the ultimate objective which is to end up as a healthy pensioner who understands that daily walks are a self-evident dimension of a good quality of life, then fine. But if the ultimate objective in every case is to become a football star, we’ve lost it.
This week I have been enjoying my spanking new copy of “Kärnfrisk Familj“, the story of the Danish Mauritson family that is taking Scandinavia by storm. It presents the fascinating story of the health transformation of a rather average unfit family with all of the usual health symptoms of wrong food and lack of motion – their autistic son was the exception to this averageness. Although there are plenty of images presented in the book of young boys sporting, the main point presented consistently throughout is don’t overdo it, do it together and do it regularly. Our society with its time and space limitations, and eternal competitive pressure has made these qualities difficult to achieve. In my humble opinion, it’s time to refocus.
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Tags: friluftsliv, health, Karolinksa Institute, Kärnfrisk Familj, overweight, physical activity
Posted in Balance, New Thinking, Physical Activity and Health, children | 1 comment »
Friday, April 23rd, 2010
Have you come to your senses yet?
As I’ve been walking around under a cloud of volcanic ash wondering, like many, when aircraft are going to restore that reliable sense of speed we have got used to in our lives, my dog Lucy has been concerned with developments on the ground. As the earth softens and emits the many smells of the life within it, Lucy is in sensory heaven. It has been a long, dull winter without the aromas of the earth and only endless amounts of white snow that, to her chagrin, leaves her fur sparkling clean. For a dog, not walking around with something ill-smelling in its fur is the height of unattractiveness.
So far I have managed to stick to my new regimen of a long early morning walk in Drottningholm Park. It is a wonderful new habit but I fear that Lucy and I have objectives that are at odds. While I am seeking to break into a sweat, burn energy and tone muscles by keeping up a goose-step pace strictly between 6.30 and 7.30 am (when I have to be home to ensure that the children get breakfast before I start work) Lucy is in a timeless search for the smell of all smells. Like a connoisseur, she slows down at each tree to appreciate the many great smells that a tree bears: the smell of birds, squirrels, deer chewing at the lichen on the bark and of course canine buddies who have previously baptized the tree. Like a speed tyrant, I drag her forward and reprimand her for inattention to our schedule.
On one of the back paths we run into Crown Princess Victoria looking athletic in black followed by two noisy lifeguards. “Hej”, she comments gently to Lucy who naturally captures the spotlight with her timeless sense of joy. Then it occurs to me that not even a rushed crown princess who most likely has no desire to greet more beings during her precious early morning hours can resist being drawn in by that affectionate space that a dog creates. Even if dogs physically live in our harried world, spiritually they preserve that original authenticity of joy in the moment that just then seems to have no limits.
Lucy is all done with her pal the Crown Princess and has now found a snail to focus her attentions upon. The snail is crossing the road at a pace which is painful to observe. There isn’t a great deal of traffic here but all it takes is the occasional vehicle to send the snail to purgatory. My urge is to lift up the poor little critter and move it to safety on the other side of the road, but something tells me that we should let nature take its course. Lucy and I watch the snail with ears pricked until finally its trail has left a shiny line across the road. We look up and find that a vehicle has been waiting for us to be done with snail hour.
Although she can be annoying I cherish my dog. How else would I learn to appreciate the delicate progress of a snail?
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For anyone contemplating purchasing a furry friend check Svenska Kennelklubben. If you are interested in a Lucy check Golden Retrieverklubben.
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Tags: Crown Princess Victoria, dogs, Drottningholm, golden retriever, parks, royals, speed, time, Walking
Posted in Animals and Health, Fauna, Landscape, New Thinking, Park, Season, Slow, Spring, Walking, nature | 2 comments »
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
Change is inevitable so pick your moment
I had just returned from the mountains where April was like silk glistening on every facade. In the mountains there was peace: no rush to prepare for the life to come when the snow had melted. Here there were no gardens to tend. The blueberries and the cloudberries would simply burst forth in the shade of the pine and the spruce, and there would be nothing else to do but pick them and enjoy. There is always a reluctance to leave the measured rhythm of the mountains for the speed of the south. If you are wondering where this treasured paradise of mine is check www.fjatervalen.se.
Back in reality, I made one of those resolutions that only the spring grants you the wherewithal to make. I would get up an hour earlier to take a longer and more energetic walk with Lucy the dog in the mornings. I would reach the park before the signs of rushed humans became evident in the gravel, and before the morning traffic reached its cacophonous peak. Somehow I would beat the speed.
At the waterfront all signs of the thick sheet of ice that had looked unmeltable only a couple of weeks ago were gone. As I walked down the linden alleys my thoughts were drowned out by the screeching of birds for which 6-7 am was obviously mating hour. The branches of the trees were still bare but the birds had got a head start on the race of the season. In the gardens of the well-kept homes leading down to the China Pavilion, the bishop’s goutweed had already managed to creep up before the garden sheds had been unlocked for the warm season. “Remember to get your tomato seeds planted by the end of March,” I had been advised by the lady with the greenhouse next door. Were mine planted? Were they hell! Time was running through my fingers.
Up at the China Pavilion, the pansies stood ready to be unveiled at the doorstep. Were we already back at the annual pansy exhibition? I sat down on the top step and took a sneak preview of the exhibit under one of the white covers that would be lifted later this morning. “Peaceful moment” read the sign in front of one of the many different varieties. Of course, peaceful moment, I thought, isn’t it so true? Change is in the nature of things so just pick your moment.
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Tags: China Pavilion, Fjätervålen, mountains, pansies, spring
Posted in New Thinking, Outdoor Activity, Season, Slow, Spring, The Now, gardening | No comments »
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
I'm worth it!
With great excitement and eager to reach out to the world anew, I had just launched my new Facebook account. This certainly is not the first time that I’ve launched an on-line communications tool but it is the first time that I began to wonder about the new tools by which we measure ourselves. There in the left column I had one star out of five for post quality and zero interactions. Granted, I had just launched the page and so no one knew about it, but these messages did stick in my mind as I turned off my computer and headed out for a walk in the equally uninspiring mud that covers the country roads after this winter of ample snow. Looking down my path, I repeated those disturbing terms – one star for post quality, zero interactions – and began to identify with the horse droppings on the path ahead. Don’t get me wrong – I do love social media for the way that it helps me to meet people who I would otherwise never know (you perhaps!), but the whole business of measurement on the Internet seems to be going into overdrive so that it can be counterproductive.
To my right and left there were in fact very beautiful experiences to be had. Tiny villages dating back to Viking times dotted the landscape. Several of the rust-red cottages showed evidence of being originals dating back many hundreds of years. It wasn’t hard to imagine looking into a window and seeing a woman sitting at a weaving loom from which a new pattern that people everywhere would admire and replicate for generations to come was emerging. My thoughts became entwined in this image. How had this woman created her pattern? Surely not by wandering around the village and asking the neighbors what they liked to look at (i.e. how many stars and interactions might my idea generate?). Her inspiration would most likely have been the shy emergence of nature in the early spring and that irresistible sense of anticipation that goes hand-in-hand with it. As for the pattern, was it beautiful simply because many people would eventually like it or did it have its own inherent beauty? Was it worth something in and of itself? Was this woman worth something, whatever the future success of her brainchild, the pattern?
As I turned the corner on the road leading down to the small early medieval village of Lambarudd, my thoughts came to a head: of course she is worth something and so is her pattern, because this capacity to make something out of nothing and believe in it enough to create it is the way that humanity moves forward. At middle age, and having experienced plenty of ups and downs, I have enough skin on my nose to know this and to handle the starting stats on my Facebook page with a bit of perspective. Yet if we look at the increasing psychological ill-health of youngsters (a major focus of research at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute), in particular Facebook-obsessed teenagers, we find that younger generations don’t consider their ‘patterns’ and, by association, themselves worth anything because the Facebook and other social media gods have come up with a random rating system that is misleading. Looking upwards, I took a deep breath and exhaled my irritation. Hanging above me on an old telephone line was an assortment of sneakers that had been tied together and thrown up in the air. Are we creating a society in which youngsters are hanging up their sneakers and great ideas because the bar is just too high?
“Lambarudd” read the letters etched into the wooden signpost at the side of the road. Here I was surrounded by what was most likely the origin of a commonly used word. For those of you who do not know it, “lamb” is a word that originates from the many small Scandinavian villages that survived by tending these woolly animals. Lambarudd was the plainest place on earth and its people had given the world a very important word. As I stood there on this small muddy peninsula of cottages jutting out into Lake Mälar, I appreciated being here. That is, not because the world flocks here or because it has a great Facebook page or highly visited site on the Internet, but because it has a strong inherent sense of self-worth.
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Concerning how the great new ideas of the future will emerge, I recommend reading Ambassador Matthew Barzun’s Blog Om Sweden entry about TED talk and the science of motivation. “Autonomy, mastery and purpose” rather than carrots and sticks seem to be the way that we are going to meet our future challenges.
Concerning lamb, check out The Nordic Wellbeing Cookbook for your Easter celebration.
If you want to increase my interactions in Facebook, you can visit me there at Julie’s Island or nordicwellbeing.com.
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Tags: Facebook, Karolinska Institute, lamb, Lambarudd, Motivation, self-worth
Posted in Island, Landscape, Motivation, New Thinking, Season, Spring, Uncategorized | 3 comments »
