I always believed that America’s greatest export was optimism. No country could rival our ability to dust ourselves off and start anew.
I always believed that America’s greatest export was its optimism. No country in the world could rival our ability to dust ourselves off and start anew. Despotism hadn’t etched itself in to our national psyches yet. We could still afford our short term memories.
When I moved to Holland eight years ago, I ran from that optimism. I was embarrassed by our national naiveté. I longed to live in a place that understood that evil is something you live with, not something you defeat. As the child of a Holocaust survivor who grew up with war stories in lieu of fairy tales, I knew that joy was measured in moments, not decades, that bad things awaited you around every corner. While my friends imagined how they would react when Prince Charming would climb through their windows, I practiced how I would outwit Hitler when he would climb through mine.
Mom never shared the details of her starvation in Auschwitz. Instead, I found other ways of extracting the truth. I only needed to open the cupboard and find 40 containers of powdered milk hiding behind the Cheerios to know that part of her story.
I learned how to read between the lines. Later, when I became a professional storyteller, I was surprised by how literal my audiences were. In fact, I can’t recall one performance in America where someone didn’t approach me after a show and ask, “Was that story true?” This literalism wasn’t limited to performances either. A fact checker from the New York Times actually asked me to verify the year Peter Stuyvesant’s ghost appeared on Second avenue, before they could publish a playful Halloween piece I wrote for their City Section.
It wasn’t until I began to perform abroad that I began to see how different Europeans were as listeners. In the U.S., I learned the onus was always on the teller of stories; In Europe, it was always on the listener. During my performances in Holland, where I mainly worked, audiences wanted to decide for themselves what was relevant. No one there ever asked me for reassurance that the information I was delivering was factually true. They seemed to have a different, more cynical relationship with words, one that was fueled by centuries of dark memories.
I reveled in my new expat life. Aside from finally experiencing affordable health care, I felt like I was at the grown-up table. Content mattered. Audiences had real attention spans. Best of all, I didn’t have to endure a Disney-ized version of war.
I’ll never forget the time I was invited to run a workshop at a Maryland high school for Holocaust Memorial Day. As I drove up to the school, I found black train tracks painted on the driveway and the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” hanging over the entry door. I’m still recovering from the school principal in Omaha who showed me the giant water pistol he used while re-enacting the role of an SS officer with his students as part of their history curricula.
The America I experienced as a storyteller was akin to a badly behaved child. Impatient, literal, and without historical memory. In short, young. With Trump’s ascendency, we just got a bit older. We finally have our first true martinet, a reality some of us planned for our whole lives and some of us are just waking up to. Years from now, when we look back at this unthinkable period of history and attempt to make sense of the damage done, we will no longer ask the question I once dreaded: “Is this story true?” Because the real legacy we will be left with is cynicism.
Suddenly I find myself yearning for that same American naiveté I once ran from. Because I now know, for better or worse, our optimism depends on it.
Lisa Lipkin lives in Amsterdam and Edgartown. She was a professional storyteller for over 25 years, and is the author of Bringing the Story Home: The Complete Guide to Storytelling for Parents.
Comments
"I longed to live in a place
David F"I longed to live in a place that understood that evil is something you live with, not something you defeat."
Why? Is that the answer you get from being a child of Holocaust survivors? That seems to be a strange takeaway... the optimistic people that thought evil could be defeated saved a lot of people from that evil. Not knowing your situation, it seems you are saying that the USA should have stayed out of WWII (live with evil), at least one of our parents would be dead, and you wouldn't exist.
"I was surprised by how literal my audiences were." Given all the "fake news" around the past election, I would think that people would want to know if something is fact or allegory.
"They seemed to have a different, more cynical relationship with words, one that was fueled by centuries of dark memories." I suggest that one of the reasons the "media" has lost credibility with a large portion of American society is that it doesn't take centuries to figure out that truth and words don't always go together.
"I didn’t have to endure a Disney-ized version of war." I work with a lot of US Military, I can guarantee that Disney is the last thing they worry about. Btw, if you think Disney is pro war, I have a bridge for you:)
"The America I experienced as a storyteller was akin to a badly behaved child. Impatient, literal, and without historical memory. In short, young." I agree completely! I've listened to so many people that can't figure out why the USA was founded or what the founding principals were! Have we always lived up to our grand basic principles? Of course we haven't, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist and they have not been a positive force for history.
"Suddenly I find myself yearning for that same American naiveté I once ran from. Because I now know, for better or worse, our optimism depends on it." What you call naivete was faith grounded on history. So many have given up on faith grounded in history and you wonder why we have gotten Trump.
Of course I cannot speak for
Susan Forbes Hansen West Hartford & Vineyard HavenOf course I cannot speak for Ms. Lipkin, but my take on her statement "I didn’t have to endure a Disney-ized version of war" is not that Disney is pro-war (!) but rather that she's talking with people who know what war really is, rather than people who have been fed a fantasized version of it.
This article is very poignant
Maggie Moffitt Southport, CtThis article is very poignant and in sync with how much of our country is feeling.
My mother still has cans of powdered milk and condensed milk in her cupboard, -- for she was a war baby. I am terrified for our country and our future. Indeed, we need all the optimism we can muster. Beautifully written. Thank you.
We may be of the same
rajka Ungerer EdgartownWe may be of the same generation or very close. I grew up in Croatia and was totally innocent in my youth, until "horror" stories were revealing the truth. In my seventy years I never stopped reading them. Each time I felt the pain of humanity.
Today, reading your story, my immediate reaction was: How refreshing!
No need to say any more! Thank you for showing me how one individual's story can have a profound impact on many. Me included.
Enjoy a beautiful day in Edgartown!!!
Hitler and his Nazi's were
Douglas Korves Always on IslandHitler and his Nazi's were unimaginable. Especially for the 6 million Jews, and also for the other 6 million people killed, and the millions of others killed in Russia, Europe, Japan, Africa, Southeast Asia and the various Axis and Allied troops.
WW II was horrific, particularly for the Jews and particularly for European Jews. However, let's compare the centuries of discrimination, predjudice, and injustice that monarchies and rulers of Europe and Russia (weather you immigrated prior to either World Wars or were trapped behind) that was imposed on the Jews, and how that contributed to the "glass is half empty psyche" and the cautious viewpoint that is the hallmark of the Eastern European Jewish experience; verses the optimism that you claim is the USA's niaevite.
I am your age and have lived in New York City all my life. I have friends of survivors and new their parent survivors for 30-40 years.
I had the good fortune of knowing Sarah Berkowitz (and her daughter Florence) who met a man who also lost his entire family in the death camps. They married started this new family in the USA. I learned first hand that the Holocaust was horrific and not the partial story that Americans learned in the 50's and in war films.
America is not naive (up until this election), uninformed Yes. Remember that we were a small country of colonists who left the race, class, and religious persecution of a nation of arrogance and aristocracy.
America was founded in war but individuals naively wrote a masterpiece of optimism. Sadly, it was allowed to be manipulated and puppeted by the Media. America has always been optimistic. Washington fought in rags to beat the British. Lincoln prevailed in war and the optimistically and benevolently set the basis that reunited the North and the South. America optimistically went twice "over there" while surviving Pearl Harbor and took the fight 10,000 miles to the Japanese Empire. Those armed forces came out of the dust bowls and soup lines of the depression. Yes, my Mid-west and Irish parents had deep back-ups of oatmeal, powdered milk, soap, soup, tuna, and toilet paper.
We gave back the countries and the people to live in freedom not because we are naive - because we are optimistic.
We survived, 9/11, the crashes of 29 and 2008, because Roosevelt and Obama were optimists. Our glasses and our health insurance is only half-filled, but I am 70 years old, and naïveté enough to want to stay an optimist when I grow up.
Add new comment