Sylvia's Journal

With the new daylight savings time I am waking up again in the middle of the night it seems. It is pitch dark and cold; another one of these ‘having to bite through’ periods; this time not because of bodily pain or anything like that, but a simple ‘because I don’t like it.’

Having learned to bite through (not really bad stuff) as a child is part of my cultural heritage. It is woven into the protestant work ethic of the Dutch which taught me that life should not be lived in pursuit of fun. The childhood variant is ‘homework first, play later.’ I was lucky in that the homework was always a cinch and play, with the many children on our street, was fun and outside the door, not requiring parental drop off or pick up.

I woke up with fragments of a dream. I quickly scribbled these on a piece of paper before I took my shower so I would not forget. I do this with my eyes closed. Sometimes, when I get out of the shower and have my glasses on I cannot decipher what I wrote. But this time I could: looking at street scenes of one culture while sitting inside and with people from another. We were watching a slide show. I had intended to hook up my iPod to the slide show and have some of my favorite music, but someone else had already done that. He had selected other music, not what I would have chosen, but it matched so well that we kept it on and I put my iPod away. I remember saying to the people watching that these street scenes were not all that different from those in their country. I also remember expecting protest (‘No, everything is very different from us!”)

I think the dream was triggered by an email from a colleague who said the (African) country he lived in was unique. I wrote back, ‘of course it is, every country is unique!’ The dream is not about surface but about what is underneath. As a psychologist I am intensely interested in people’s life stories and hear how their current ‘being in the world’ was shaped. Much like my growing up in a Dutch protestant family shaped me. This is also why I have to understand my dreams; that comes from the thread of Enlightenment that is also woven into Dutch Protestant culture.

Another trigger for the dream might have been the lunch we had at MSH with the Minister of Health from Guyana. I was already impressed by him when he remembered Cabul who was a volunteer in Guyana several years ago. While we were eating he told us one story after another. There is much writing in the leadership literature about story telling as an important tool for leaders. This gentleman was a master of the trade. He has also been minister of health longer than most any of the many MSH has been dealing with over the years. Storytelling is a craft of the long haul I think and he proved it. It combines seeing patterns and then collecting moments in life that illustrate those patterns.

Later in the afternoon the story of the day that is only now revealed to me through my dream continued. I was asked by our young (20s/30s) staff to help them hone their facilitation skills. Two of them practiced a short session on the rest of us which we then critiqued and I got to tell stories. I loved it. They kept thanking me profusely at the end for my time; what they didn’t know is that such sessions are the highlight of my day. I think I am a mentor/teacher at heart. My one piece of advice to them was to get a sturdy backpack, an imaginary one, and keep tossing stories inside it, much like the minister has done. These stories can be pulled out any time to illustrate a concept, a theory, or a belief. I have some well-worn stories in my backpack. They are like the old blankies, teddy bears or dolls from our childhood, and comfort us as much as they enlighten others.

Axel dropped the boys off at his old school (UNH) where they teamed up with a third friend who is now studying there and who, according to Axel, had already become an American in speech and outer appearance. He had lunch in the school cafeteria and told them stories about the student protest he was heavily involved in nearly 40 years ago.

In the evening Axel went to a career fair at Mass. College of Art and he was welcomed back in the crowd like a long lost son. He made some good connections and returned back in high spirits. It was a community that he temporarily lost because of the accident and one that he discovered was more important to him than he had realized. Stories and communities, these are also two big elements of our recovery.