War in Switzerland

Charles sat with his widowed mother in her small home in Lincolnshire, England. It was almost Christmas and the two of them sat alone warming next to the fireplace, Charles on the floor and his mother under a blanket in her recliner. She was 93 years old and her face was wrinkled and thinning.

“Mother,” Charles asked, “What was the happiest time in your life?” He knew this would be the last time he’d see his mother alive. Her health was worsening, and there was a great distance between their homes now. He was certain that the next time he saw her would be at her funeral, and he wanted to make sure he didn’t misuse this visit by talking about trivial things.

His mother had never struck him as a particularly happy person, and he wondered why she hadn’t been happier. It wasn’t that she seemed depressed or unreasonably angry ever; it was just that she never seemed to have much joy in her life. Whatever motherly warmth Charles and his brother got from her seemed to come more from a sense of motherly duty than from a sense of joy or happiness. He looked out the window at the gray afternoon sky and waited for his mother’s response.

She rocked back in her chair and watched the fire. Charles wondered if she’d heard his question. “Mother, what was the…”

“I heard you, Charles.” She interrupted. “I just don’t know if you will understand my answer.”

Charles looked up at her again. Her eyes were closed now and he saw the creases that extended outward from the corners. Not surprisingly they looked just like the ones on his own aging face.  She took in a deep breath and then spoke. “The happiest time in my life was during The War. That was the happiest I ever felt.”

It wasn’t what he expected her to say, and certainly it was not what he wanted to hear either. Surely her happiest time was when he and his brother were innocent little boys who wrestled about on the ground and begged their mum to come join them. If not then, maybe her honeymoon with his father. Charles poked a stick into the fire and stiffened his back. How could the happiest time in her life be during World War II? 

“The war, mother? The happiest time in your life was during World War II? When the world was consumed by death and violence?”

“I was 20 years old when the war started.  In all of my life since then, I’ve never felt so intensely alive,” She said. Charles focused on keeping the fire alive rather than looking at his mother.  “I felt so…I don’t know - there was such a sense of unity. We all knew what we had to do. We didn’t have to question our purpose. We knew. Every day, when we woke up, we knew what our purpose was. To fight Germany. To beat the Germans. We had a clearly defined enemy.”

“Wartime, mother?  That’s the happiest you ever felt?”

“You’ve not had a war of your own, so I don’t expect you to understand, Charles.”

*****

“And I reckon I won’t ever completely understand it,” He tells me.

Charles is one of the most fascinating people I’ve met in the UAE, and he’s one of my best friends, despite the fact that he’s much older than I am. Almost 30 years older in fact. He is another English teacher at the school where I work.

We’re sitting alone in his classroom when he tells me about his visit home and the conversation he had with his mother. He is still wrestling with it - trying to make sense of it.  The white hairs on his short beard hug thoughtful lines that cut deeply across his face and out from his eyes.  Sunlight streams in through the open door to his classroom, and it lights up the student papers that are taped up haphazardly on his wall. We are worlds away from Lincolnshire, England but his mind is still there.

A thoughtful speaker with a sturdy British accent, Charles doesn’t tell stories, he paints pictures with words. And that is probably why I tend to gravitate to him when I don’t have a class. I often find myself sitting in his room wishing I were one of his students. A Cambridge graduate who has worked and traveled about the world, he’s intensely knowledgeable and wonderfully thoughtful - a brilliant speaker, and an equally talented listener.

“It’s a bit jolting to hear your mum admit that she felt the happiest amidst the longest and most violent war the world has ever seen.” He says.

“I can see how that would throw you for a loop,” I tell him.  “It seems kinda morbid.”

“I suppose it makes sense though,” He says. “Most of us go though life wondering what it is we’re meant to do here. But when England was at war, mum didn’t have to wonder.  She had a clearly defined purpose and a clearly defined enemy.” He leans back in his chair and clasps his hands together behind his head. We both sit and silently for a moment and think.

A couple of boys laugh as they walk past the door to Charles’s classroom. One of them punches the other in the arm, and a playful wrestling match ensues in the sunlit corridor outside.

Charles and I spectate as the two playfully fight each other.

“There are a couple of young men who know how vital a war is to their happiness.” I say lightly, hoping to clear the air of lingering sadness Charles’s story left. “Look how happy they are when they fight each other.”

“I apologize. That was a bit dreary wasn’t it?  Not, perhaps, my most uplifting of tales. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about. Shall we talk about something a shade less depressing? Have you decided what you’ll do with your summer holiday? I reckon you’ll do something more pleasant than visiting your dying mother on a gray day in England.”

I turn away from the playful scuffle in the hallway and look back at Charles. He’s smiling now and leaning back in his chair, the solemn look on his face replaced by a sideways grin.

“I’m going to fly to Switzerland for a week, and then I’m heading back to the States,” I tell him.

“Oh, wonderful. I love Switzerland!" Charles has been just about everywhere and done just about everything, so that he's been to Switzerland surprises me none at all. "What will you do there?” He asks.

“I’m going to run a half marathon in the Alps,” I spill, unable to hide my enthusiasm. I’ve never been to Europe and I’ve never run a half marathon either, so I'm really looking forward to my summer holiday.  “I’ve been training for the race for a month, but just last night that I booked my flight to Zurich.”

“My goodness. You do realize that a marathon is twenty-two kilometers, yes?”

“Ya, but it’s only thirteen miles.”

The lines around his beard creep upwards into a big smile. “A very American way to look at it, indeed. And you’ve already registered for the race?”

“I’ve registered for the race, booked the flight, and started the training. I’ve been running well over 50 kilometers every week for the last month,” I tell him.

“That sounds awful, but good for you. That’s splendid. Well, no actually I think you’re quite mad. I admire your gumption, but I think you’re mad. Why are you doing it?”

“What do you mean, why?” I ask.

“I mean why do you want to run 22 kilometers,” He pauses and grins, “Or 13 miles?  It’s not something most people would do voluntarily.”

Strangely enough - I never though about it and suddenly I see what he means. What struck me as a perfectly reasonable fitness goal now strikes me as odd too. What sick personality trait do I possess that makes me want to wreck my body for 3 months in preparation for a race that will take less than 2 hours? Why do I feel satisfaction when I see my laundry basket full of sweat-drenched headbands and t-shirts?  Why do my sore knees feel like badges? Why does this training make me happy?

“I’m not exactly sure,” I admit to Charles. “If I’m honest, the training is physically exhausting.  Last night I waited until 8:00 p.m and when I went outside to run my 11 kilometers for the day, it was still over ninety degrees.  My throat was so dry when I finished that I could barely swallow any water. My heart rate was so jacked up last night that I rolled around in bed unable to relax or fall asleep. My knees feel like they have cement in them.  So I guess I don’t really know why I’m doing it…except that I love it.  It makes me happy.”

Charles unfolds his hands from behind his head and leans in towards me; a mischievous smile dashes across his eyes, but it disappears as quickly as it appeared. I wonder what’s on his mind. He doesn’t talk though; he simply waits for me to carry on.

“It sounds miserable, I know. And it is. But somehow it also feels really good.  When I run it’s like there’s this voice in my head that says you can’t do it, and it’s really fun to try and defeat it. I feel like I’m just rambling. What were you smiling about a second ago?”

“Tell me more about the voice, then I’ll tell you why I was smiling.”

“You know the voice. It’s the thing that tells you that you can’t do something. Honestly, Charles, that voice is probably the reason I’m here right now. It’s always been in my head telling me I can’t do things.”

"Really? How is responsible for you being here?"

“It told me I was too small-town and too scared to ever go live in another part of the world. It told me I was stuck in Missouri, and I might as well accept it. I hate that part of myself - that voice.  I’ve always felt compelled to fight it.  That’s why I started looking for ways to get out of America and experience the world. I wanted to broaden my perspective yes, but I also wanted to squelch that stupid voice. A lot of what I do in my life is about killing that voice. Seriously, what were you smiling about?”

“I'll tell you after you finish telling me about this voice.”

“Well, I always try to prove it wrong, but it never really goes away. It's my biggest enemy. It tells me I’m a lousy teacher. It tells me I’ll never be a good musician. It tells me I’ll never be able to do certain tricks on a wakeboard. It tells me I can’t write well. I'm always trying to prove it wrong, and nothing feels better than when I do prove it wrong. That’s probably the main reason why I’m running this race. I want to prove it wrong."

Charles smiles and loosens up his necktie. “It sounds like you have a clearly defined enemy. Just like Mother did during the war.  And it seems to make you very happy to fight that enemy.” He pauses for a second to let me think about it.  “Do you see why I’m smiling now?”

And I do see. My war with the voice is just like his mother’s war with Germany. That voice in my head is what the German’s were for his mother. It is my clearly-defined enemy. It gives me purpose. I don’t have to wonder what I’m meant to do with my life right now. When I finish with work I glance at my training program, write the day’s regimen on my hand with a blue pen, lace up my Nikes, and then go running.

It gives me a purpose, just like the war gave Charles’s mother a purpose. It gives me a clearly defined enemy. I’m not just swinging blindly at an enemy that I can’t see; I know what I’m fighting just like she knew what she was fighting. I’ve waged a war on the part of myself that I hate - that voice. And the war with that stupid voice is making me feel happy.

Most people couldn’t understand why Charles’s mom would identify wartime as the happiest stretch of her life. Most wouldn’t understand why I want to run a half marathon in the oxygen-starved altitudes of the Swiss Alps. But I see a connection.

Charles shuffles some papers around on his desk and then looks up at me, still smiling.

It’s funny though,” He says, “You’re going to Switzerland to fight the war with your voice. Switzerland is the one place that managed to stay neutral during my mother’s war.”

*****

My conversation with Charles has me thinking about the wars I’ve fought, and how often my happiness is hanging on the coattails of “war.”

When I was in my early 20’s I started a band with my brother and my three best friends. Against everyone’s advice, we set out to “make it” in the most unforgiving industry that exists, and we started at the rock bottom.  We were only average musicians then, we knew nobody in the music industry, and we were all small-town Missouri boys. But we wanted rock and roll success, so we waged war on the people who said it was impossible.

Every month, we loaded our red and white tour van down with banged up amplifiers and guitars.  I remember setting off for tours with as little as a single twenty dollar bill to last the week.  My face burned with embarrassment when I had to ask gas station cashiers for free cups of hot water so I could dump a package of Raman noodles in and quiet my hunger.

Sometimes we had to borrow money to pay the $50 monthly rent we owed for our practice space – an old storage locker in an unheated concrete building.   We practiced every night in that horrible room.  During the winter it got so cold that I played guitar with numb fingers.  I could see our singer’s breath come out of his mouth like smoke over the microphone.

But it was our war, and as uncomfortable as it was it gave us purpose.  We had a clearly defined enemy.  Our enemy was that mass of people who told us we couldn’t make it - the people who thought we were stupid for trying.   We were happy because we had a common goal and when we suffered we did it together.  When we slept on strangers’ cold floors without blankets in cities thousands of miles from home, we were not doing it alone.  We were, like Charles’s mom and the rest of England during WWII, unified.

And once we started experiencing success, we knew we were defeating the enemy.  When we found our own sound and started gelling together on stage we sold thousands of CDs.  We made fans all over the country.  We recorded songs with award-winning producers and played to packed crowds who knew every word.   We would go to malls in other states and see total strangers wearing our Tshirts.  Before it was all said and done we were playing shows in front of massive crowds in huge venues and even putting money in our own pockets after big shows.  Every person who listened to us was a strike against our common enemy.  Each success we had was a loss for the people we’d gone to war with - the naysayers.

Although we had some amazing successes, we never “made it,” at least not in the MTV sense of the word.  What we got from the band though, is the most important thing.  It gave us purpose, and to quote Charles’s mother, “…There was such a sense of unity.  We all knew what we had to do.  We didn’t have to question our purpose.  We knew.  Every day, when we woke up, we knew what our purpose was.  We had a clearly defined enemy.”

And I think that maybe we all tend to miss the point when we search for happiness.  We tend to think that happiness will come when we no longer have any struggles - when we don’t have to wake up every day and battle. When my life is easy, we tell ourselves, then I’ll be happy.

But I think that’s the wrong way to look for purpose or happiness.  What we should be doing is searching for new struggles, new battles, and new wars.  Our wars give us purpose.  And if we can’t find an external enemy to go to war with, it’s time to look inside and find the parts of ourselves that we don’t like and go to war with them.  Maybe the problem is that too many of us are trying to find happiness by avoiding conflict when what we should be doing is looking for our next war.

Maybe there’s a reason Charles’s mother never seemed particularly happy after the war.  Maybe she never felt so intensely alive again because she needed a war to give her life purpose, and after The War was over she couldn’t find a foe. The world no longer provided an enemy, so she didn't know what to do. Perhaps she never thought to look inward  and she failed to realize that we all have a perfectly good enemy to fight inside of us.

I’m fighting my internal enemy - that voice - by training for a half marathon that goes straight up a mountain.  I fight him every time I sit down to write.  I battle him every time I practice my instrument.  And even though I may never beat that voice in my head completely, I will continue to battle it every day of my life.  And that battle gives me great joy.

This blog entry is dedicated to my old bandmates who fought alongside me (great friends from my old life) and to Charles (a great friend in my new life).  Andy, Jacob, Jake, Derek, Joe Willy, and Charles - this one's for you.