Things That Really Were

Allies march into Poland

My grandmother was only 12 years old when the allies marched into Poland. Those were dark days, she told me during a phone conversation this afternoon. For three years, so from the ages of 12 to 15, the only reports on the news were that the allies were losing. The summer after Pearl Harbor, which happened on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, my great-grandfather joined the military. With news as bleak as it was, it was time for him to give back to his country. Great-grandpa, a cousin, and another man joined the military. For those who joined the military before they turned 18 (parental permission was required, but almost all parents gave it), if they had maintained a high enough GPA through high school, the Nantucket High granted them a war diploma so they could leave. Doesn't this seem so unreal?

Hitler's Youth Soldiers

Fast forward to the fall of 1999. I am in living in Paris traveling by train to Germany for a weekend trip. I am excited for this trip because I am taking a European history class and this trip coincides perfectly with my class. Our reading assignment for Monday was about Nazi Germany. The book contains pictures of Hitler's youth army. I am sitting there in this overnight train reading away in my history book, when several young German soldiers entered out train cabin. One large, blond soldier sat next to me. I struck up a conversation with him, and when I ran out of things to say, I went back to reading my book. Soon, my friend Audra, who was sitting in a seat facing me, said in a hushed but serious tone,

"Chantal, I think you should put your book away. The soldier looks offended."

Turning to the solder I asked him, "Does this bother you?"

He said in a loud, defiant voice and a thick German accent, "We are NOT killers!"

Needless to say, I put the book away.

Allies enter France

After my study abroad, I returned to France a few months later as a missionary. I was amazed at the older generation of French citizens. For instance, while at Christmas dinner, one older lady told of how she was only six years old when the allies came to France. She was hiding in a field. This was not an extraordinary conversation, but simply her sharing a bit about her life at the Christmas dinner table.

These stories that were just part of a curriculum in my history class, were her life, and this was the case with most of the older French citizens. They were children when the allies had finally arrived and the memories were poignant.

I guess I am writing this because these things seem so remote to me, but this evening I was chatting with Grandma on the phone. It is amazing how often the conversation with Grandma turns to the war. It was a huge part of grandma's formative years. Her high school friends left for war. Some of them never came back. Her dad left to serve. The tragedy of the world was her personal tragedy. The reality of those events humbly hits home for me.

These things really did happen.

Music

Many of you don't know this, but I have a secret passion for music. O'k, o'k, who doesn't right? Agreed. Music is one of those things, I don't know anyone who doesn't like it. Add me to the masses. I tend to fall in love with songs obsessively, which HAS to be annoying for my roommates. One of THE biggest sacrifices about serving a mission was that I couldn't listen to the radio. The day I was released, the music was back on.

When I was younger (junior high), I used to compose songs in my head. Sometimes I find songs by artists that explain a musician's relationship to their song, like the song here.



2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me,
Threatening the life it belongs to

Writing a song is an AMAZING experience. You don't feel like you are writing a song per se, but you feel like the song has an existence all of its own, it always was, and you are the one who heard it, and wrote it down. There is an electrifying emotional connection to the song and you are simply the conduit. You hear it in your head, but more than that, you can FEEL it with every ounce of who you are. Consequently, I love music and artists where it is obvious that they feel their music, because it really resonates with me.

Interesting perspective on song writing in This American Life Episode. I actually fell in love with the Phil Collins song mentioned because I could tell that he was very emotionally connected to his piece and as they say in French, ca m'a marqué. (literal translation is 'that marked me'. There isn't a perfect equivalent in English.)

My experience gave me a new appreciation for people like Mozart and even the eccentricities of musicians and artists. (You know what I mean, the violinist who has to actually enact the music in bodily movement while they play and they look mildly crazy.) With the intensity of the music, you feel like everyone else's experience with the song is a fuzzy, black and white photo compared to your rich, colorful view of the beautiful vista from the top of a mountain. You wish everyone could experience the song in its rich entirety.

Picture from here.

(Even cooler pictures taken by my sister's awesome boyfriend, Sam here.)

Impressed

This is what my distant cousins in Quebec are doing :). They did this entire video in one shot, no cuts. Amazing.

The Friends We Make Along the Way

I have 18 minutes in which to write this blog entry.

Max came into my room tonight and said - "Not another rain check tonight, ok?" Hello, melt my heart.

(1) He learned the word rain check from me.

(2) He remembered...for this reason, I love kids.

So I told him I'd play with him at 7:30. I was planning on reading my scriptures...but I am postponing until after my dance class at 8.

O'k, first, I want to point out that my favorite blogger ever is going to be on Oprah tomorrow. See here for details.

Second, I gave a talk in church a few weeks ago. It was a terrifying experience. I'd been praying and preparing all week but nothing came together for me. Normally I've rehearsed it, or at least know the stories I intend to tell before I get up there. But this time, the heavens were silent. I had no idea what I was going to say. I got up there, and what ever came to mind came out of my mouth. The funny thing is, that so many people have come to me after and said how natural I seemed and what a great talk it was. Well, it certainly wasn't due to my great forethought, that is for certain. But the thing that struck me the most, was a friend's comment that they felt so much closer to me post-talk, and how strange that one person can have everyone else feeling closer to them, all-the-while they are unaffected. Interesting. I think blogs are kind of like that sometimes. The blog above is a case and point. She doesn't know me at all, but I love her blog. Even gave a little start when I saw her father's campaign signs dotting the street corners of Provo this past week.

Lastly, the friends we make along the way. I got an e-mail from a beloved old friend today. Oh how I love him. I have, hands down, fought more with him than all of my other friends outside of my family combined, and then some. But when it is all said and done, the love is so there. Love is not something that needs or demands perfection, I think it is naturally perfecting, because it is so very real and genuine.

I spent my last weekend in Provo/Salt Lake. It was so very wonderful meeting up with old friends. Support, challenge, a push for growth. I LOVE them. I wish I had pictures of all of them. So just imagine a picture of Shaun and I. We are both in work clothes. He is in a park ranger uniform, and I am in a dress from work. I loved the juxtaposition. Then imagine Zack and I at a BYU football game. We are right by the field cheering...or rather he is cheering, and I am apathetic. He is slightly annoyed, but being kind about it.

With that said, the pictures....well, actually, they will have to wait. Max's time has come and he has rolled a tennis ball into my room and grabbed my tennis racket. No more rain checks. My blog will have to wait for another day.

The Value of Friends

Read about it here.

A few quotes from the article:

"If you want to be happy, what’s most important is to have lots of friends. Historically, we have often thought that having a small cluster of tight, long-term friends is crucial to being happy. But Christakis and Fowler found that the happiest people in Framingham were those who had the most connections, even if the relationships weren’t necessarily deep ones."

"The reason these people were the happiest, the duo theorize, is that happiness doesn’t come only from having deep, heart-to-heart talks. It also comes from having daily exposure to many small moments of contagious happiness. When you frequently see other people smile — at home, in the street, at your local bar — your spirits are repeatedly affected by your mirroring of their emotional state. Of course, the danger of being highly connected to lots of people is that you’re at risk of encountering many people when they are in bad moods. But Christakis and Fowler say their findings show that the gamble of increased sociability pays off, for a surprising reason: Happiness is more contagious than unhappiness. According to their statistical analysis, each additional happy friend boosts your good cheer by 9 percent, while each additional unhappy friend drags you down by only 7 percent. So by this logic, adding more links to your network should — mathematically — add to your store of happiness. “If you’re at the center of a network, you are going to be more susceptible to anything that spreads through it,” Fowler said. “And if happiness is spreading more reliably, then on average you’re going to be catching happy waves more often than you catch sad waves.”

"behaviors appear to spread differently depending on the type of friendship that exists between two people. In the Framingham study, people were asked to name a close friend. But the friendships weren’t always symmetrical. Though Steven might designate Peter as his friend, Peter might not think of Steven the same way; he might never designate Steven as a friend. Christakis and Fowler found that this “directionality” mattered greatly. According to their data, if Steven becomes obese, it has no effect on Peter at all, because he doesn’t think of Steven as a close friend. In contrast, if Peter gains weight, then Steven’s risk of obesity rises by almost 100 percent. And if the two men regard each other as mutual friends, the effect is huge — either one gaining weight almost triples the other’s risk. In Framingham, Christakis and Fowler found this directionality effect even among people who lived and worked very close to each other. And that, they argue, means it can’t be the environment that is making people in Framingham fatter, since the environment ought to affect each of these friends equally."

"They discovered that people who were deeply enmeshed in friendship circles were usually much happier than “isolates,” those with few ties. But if an isolate did manage to find happiness, she did not suddenly develop more ties and migrate to a position where she was more tightly connected to others. The reverse was also true: if a well-connected person became unhappy, he didn’t lose his ties and become an isolate. Your level of connectedness appears to be more persistent than even your overall temperament. “If you picked up someone who’s well connected and dropped them into another network, they’d migrate toward the center,” Christakis said. Your place in the network affects your happiness, in other words, but your happiness doesn’t affect your place in the network."

"Christakis and Fowler say social contagion could even help explain the existence of altruism: if we can pass on altruism to distant points in a network, it would help explain why altruistic people aren’t simply constantly taken advantage of by other members of their community. Last year, to test this theory, they conducted a laboratory experiment in which participants played a “cooperation game.” Each participant was asked to share a sum of money with a small group and could choose to be either generous or selfish. Christakis and Fowler found that if someone was on the receiving end of a generous exchange, that person would become more generous to the next set of partners — until the entire larger group was infected, as it were, with altruistic behavior, which meant the altruist would benefit indirectly."

“Even as we are being influenced by others, we can influence others,” Christakis told me when we first met. “And therefore the importance of taking actions that are beneficial to others is heightened. So this network thing can cut both ways, subverting our ability to have free will, but increasing, if you will, the importance of us having free will.”

"As Fowler pointed out, if you want to improve the world with your good behavior, math is on your side. For most of us, within three degrees we are connected to more than 1,000 people — all of whom we can theoretically help make healthier, fitter and happier just by our contagious example. “If someone tells you that you can influence 1,000 people,” Fowler said, “it changes your way of seeing the world.”

Your thoughts?

My sister Colette sent this to me. The woman's sentiments about how her mission made her wish that she had spent her life being less selfish really resonated with me. When I talk of my mission, I try to be honest about the fact that it was really, really hard. The world is harsh, but the exposure really softened me and made me wish that my life prior to that time had been less me-focused. It is a sentiment that I still carry strongly with me. I set all sorts of goals for doing loads of community service when I got back. This reminded me of the person the mission made me realize I wanted to be.

Why I Love Her....

Because she makes me feel great!!

Thanks Julianne.