The End of Optimism
I always believed that America’s greatest export product 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… read more >
The End of OptimismI always believed that America’s greatest export product 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 with me. Instead, I found other ways of extracting the truth. I only needed to open the cupboard and find forty containers of powdered milk hiding behind the Cheerios or two freezers full of food to know that part of her story. Even joyous occasions had pain etched into them, like the tears that fell without cause at a Little League game or a family picnic, or the way she would frantically pull the shades down seconds after we placed the colorfully lit Chanukah menorah in the window, or her regular trips to antique stores in search of objects that looked like those lost in the war. 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… read more >