We should all go to psyhcologists

Originally I wanted to write about Webster Groves - the lovely suburb where we are living. But some recent devastating events in Hungary got me so upset that I decided to postpone my perfect and shiny Webster Groves description and instead write about my thoughts - how I see my country from roughly 8000 km distance, in the light of living in the USA.

I will share two stories with you. Both are Hungarian, but otherwise completely unrelated.

The first story

The first story is a public one, the very one that upset me. In a nutshell: in my beloved country, which used to be a young and blossoming democracy, the biggest opposition newspaper was shut down, overnight. As it is usually the case with stunning acts of dictatorships, the sad news was trending internationally over the weekend in an amazing speed (in the Bloomberg, the Telegraph, for example).

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, and underneath, in the water, in the deep and rotten, there are tons of thousands of similar and even uglier stories - the wrongdoings of the oligarchic system of the current Hungarian elite.  

Well, of course, the Hungarian society has already had 6 years of this madness, during which the vast majority just calmly endured, most people are kind of trained now for these events. (For those of you who don't know: it started with a new government announcing a new constitution in 2010 and I cannot tell you a corner of life that stayed intact since.) I already listed  how far we got during the reign of this government from a developed and satisfied country where people like to live. My people doesn't stand against these events, it seems to me that nothing is horrible or big enough to shake up the vast majority of  Hungarians.

Losing a newspaper has horrific consequences to a society - if you have seen this movie, or heard about this story, you know why. And it is also not that easy to redo the harm. Founding a newspaper comes with high costs and funding (or monetizing) investigative journalism is becoming a more and more challenging problem.  

When the story broke for us, in Saturday morning, we got devastated, hovering aimlessly around in our little apartment. I know that many of my friends had the very same feelings - hopelessness and anger and great pain.  We lost an important fortress that resisted this political madness and offered a little island of normality - where newspapers are not the newsletters of the government.

This was the first story.

The second story

The second story has nothing to do with the first one. It is a family story, happened this year in Hungary, but that is basically the only connection between them. 

This story is about a woman's life - let's call her Mary. Mary's parents met when Jack, the future father, was still at university. Both young and deeply in love, Mary's mother got pregnant. The couple got married, Jack dropped out, as the responsibility to provide money and food with a child and wife suddenly fall on him. This was in the mid '70-s in Hungary, life wasn't that easy in those years. 

The newly-weds lived together with Jack's mother. She wasn't an easy character, to say politely. She hated and despised her new daughter-in-law and not-yet-born granddaughter from the first moment, and with great bitterness. She did everything in her power to make everyone's life miserable. And she was quite successful - Mary's mother and father felt enormous shame for what they did, for having a baby.

The parents didn't think they made a good trade - to let a university degree go as an exchange for the fruit of their love, for their daughter. They weren't happy, proud parents - trusting that the difficulties will ease over time. 

Instead, they somehow subconsciously blamed their daughter for every bad turn of their life, starting with the lost university degree. The shame never went away, but get implanted to the childhood of Mary, drop by drop, deeply to her soul. Years later the family had a second child - Annabell.

Time had passed, the girls were growing up. 

And Mary was a little strange. She was smart, gifted in some area of life, yet she never in her life dated men (or women). There were no secret kissing at the early teenage years, no joy of discovering her own sexuality, no boyfriends in any stage in her life. She already got a degree and a stable job, the family still doubted if she ever has touched another human being (or herself, for that matter) in life. She was keen on being and staying 'clean'. 

Years passed again, and rumors evolved in the larger family that there was something seriously wrong with Mary. She became a maniac, avoiding contact with other family members, friends, neighbors or colleagues. She stopped working. She became extremely paranoid and suspicious - especially with doctors, whom she obviously would have needed. Yet no one took her to a visit.

And then, Jack suddenly died. By that time, Jack's mother didn't enrich the life of her loved ones on this Earth, she had passed away a half a year prior. The girls inherited a big but run-down family house in the countryside. Usually, it is extremely painful to sell such a house in the Hungarian countryside. Indeed, the estate was on sale for years, so the family felt very lucky when a potential buyer showed up, willing to pay a decent money for the house.

By that time, no one was really in touch with Mary, as she was terrified of her own family and refused to make contacts with them. But Mary was necessary for selling the house, as it was her property in 50%, so Annabell and other family members had to have her consent for the selling. They made an effort to get in touch with her.

Mary's phone was disconnected, and neighbors stated that she had long moved from her apartment, and no one moved in since. Having no idea where to start searching for her, the family decided to broke in the empty apartment - maybe it offers some clues regarding Mary's whereabouts. 

Indeed it offered, but something greatly different: Mary's dead body. By the time people found her, she was dead since an estimated six months. 

This was the second story.

Consequences

This is a horror story. A nightmare of an existence. No one wants to die this way: locked to your head, to your own madness, abandoned of family or friends, being dead and half rotten for a six months before anyone opens the door to you.

I have goosebumps when I think of Mary's life - in how many levels and layers was it wrong and broken. I could spend hours with analyzing who's responsibility is this sad end. I could claim Mary, herself - after all, it was her life, her responsibility, why didn't she seek for any help to balance out her childhood. I could claim all her family members - because maybe Mary couldn't reach out for help herself by the time she accepted the fact that she needed it. I could blame the parents - about not being healthy and sound enough, not being a barrier between the grandmother's bitterness and the child, but making the situation worse. (I have a couple of more idea, but I won't write them all -  this is not the point of sharing this story.)

The reason I shared this story with you today is that I think this is a completely average family story in Hungary.  And this has a devastating consequence to the public life of my country.

Just in this week, I heard the described story, another horrific one ended with suicide, and I didn't even search for stories! And if you think that poverty might be a factor in the making of these tragedies - well, in both cases we talk about rather middle-class families. Every single family has at least one similar story from the last 50-100 years.

I could tell you endless of these  family stories. I could easily fill complete nights by telling them - as if a Halloween-edition Scheherezade - and you would feel by dawn that you are living in a different universe. In a Maison of Madness. Stories would be about rapes and horrible abuses where justice never comes, holocaust traumas ended in buried identities, lost statuses in the upheavals of social changes where piece never reaches. I would tell you a countless number of suicidal cases, alcoholism and other forms of self-destruction - things being a result of the world where Good rarely defeats Evil. Where Evil rules most of the time. (Don't believe me - check out this statistics, and take a closer look at the Central European region - this is also a regional thing, not just Hungary affected.)

The problem is not the stories itself - although the region had such twentieth century that made survival an advanced skill of Central Europeans. The real obstacle is that after the traumas, after such a century, no psychological work has been done in most cases. No any sort of recovery or healing. No transitioning back from surviving to fully live again.

In Mary's story, some sort of trauma goes through three generation - killing the member of the third one. No one stood up against this effect through the course of a half of a century. And I know, it is not that easy to find help. But most people don't even realize how deeply they are dragged by their fears, moved by their bad spirits. Did you have Jewish ancestors? You have work to be done. Did you have abuse in the family? Suicides? Alcoholics? You have work to be done. Was there any trauma happening to any of your family members in the last 3 generation? You have an enormous amount of work to be done! You have to dissolve these stories and the traumas behind them, make them harmless to you and your kids. Otherwise, you will just pass it away, as your parents did to you. 

So I am asking you, my fellow citizens, why do we exactly expect a healthier public life in Hungary, a more resilient one, one that stands for itself (e.g. in case a national newspaper is shut down) if most of us are completely unable to do so in a private setting?  Why do we never connect these two spheres of life - the private and the public?

You know what Elanor Roosevelt is famous for saying - 'No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.' Well, I think this is perfectly true for the public life as well. We could resist this government. We have the tools, the knowledge, the committed people. We have enough harm done to have all right on Earth to resist. Yet the resistance is just not happening on a large enough scale.

It is not happening, because most of our citizens value and care themselves as much as this government values and cares them - close to zero. They are the prisoners of their own self. The hell outside is just the reflection of many people's world of inside.

So, if you want to serve your country, just do us a favor and go to a psychologist. Get you part of the work done. Only free souls can be brave enough to win Hungary back to us.

Photos: 
The first photo depicts the last printed headlines of the shut shutdown newspaper. The source is mno.hu.

The second one is a painting from a Hungarian painter, János Gulácsi, famous for being schizophrenic and made paintings about his inner world. My suspicion is that Mary had something schizophrenic-alike, I couldn't think of a better way how to illustrate the world of people living in such condition. 
This painting is called Arte, Vita, Natura. This was one of his last painting before he died. The dominant, door-like split in the middle of the painting is the entrance of his grave, and you see him walking in. Yes, seriously. Today, 12th October marks the author's birthday, another reason why to choose one of his paintings to illustrate today's post.  
The source of the painting is commons.wikimedia.org.

The third one is an OECD bar chart regarding suicidal rates based on data from 2011. The source is qz.com.

The second story:
For protecting their privacy, I changed the name of the characters and some minor circumstances in the second story. 

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen

Reevaluation of the Truman presidency

Kansas city being 'just' 250 miles away from us (let me help you out: 402 km), it was evident that our first trip would be to discover Dorothy's land. A couple of miles before you reach Kansas city, though, you stumble upon Independence, Missouri - a small but remarkable city, the hometown of Harry S. Truman. Independence is all about Truman - his presidential library, his home, the church where he married his wife. 

If you are not a history geek as much as we are, a reminder: Harry S. Truman was a US president between 1945-1953. And if you are not a history geek, probably that is all you know about him - that he was the president between Roosevelt and Eisenhower and he was the guy who dropped the atomic bomb. End of story. 

Not that I can blame anyone who didn't absorb more knowledge about Truman - unless dedicated specific effort to the case. His presidential heritage and image are very poorly maintained. (No, that's not because of the Presidential library - that is a great place, inspired me to write this post, you should go and visit.)

Truman himself was a small, thin man, looking as inspirational as a bookkeeper in Nebraska. (The only style part of his apparent was the Harry Potter-lookalike glasses.) 

His life was modest and simple - courted one woman for years before married her, got one child. That's it. No big scandals or pomp, millionaire parents or Ivy-league education. You struggle to create a narrative around his life for the pre-presidential years - you learn about a man who did farming, had interests in a zinc mine in Oklahoma, was a timekeeper for Santa Fe Railway and entered the military to serve in WWI. And then, somehow, he became the president of the US. 

Shortly after he did so, said the following statement to reporters: 'Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.' - not too comforting from a just-inaugurated war-time president. I can certainly relate to him - it is not easy to become a president after Roosevelt and in the middle of the biggest war mankind has ever experienced. But still, this sentence shadows greatly his capacity to lead and make hard decisions (and reveals his very direct, profane - yet deeply warm - style of communication).

This is the point where we all miss his grandeur - we know he dropped the bomb but fail to know anything else from the eight years during he served as a President. Just a couple of trivia - if it weren't for Truman, we didn't have institutions like the UN (he appointed Elanor Roosevelt as a member of the first General Assembly), the NATO and the Marshall plan - OECD in the long run. Truman was the one insisted on the Berlin airlift during the Berlin blockade. He recognized Israel as a state minutes after it claimed its independence. He led the country through the coldest years of the Cold War, in a midst of a foreign policy turmoil.

He created the National Security Council (NSC) and the position of the national security adviser - the must-have person in every presidential series since (like our favorite Nancy McNally). Among the regular attendees of the Council, you can spot the vice president - that is, I think, from his bitter experience to become a president with zero knowledge on foreign policy or national security updates. He was the one who established the CIA - as the world-class country ran without proper foreign intelligence until the start of WWII.

Of course, most people are familiar with these institutions and events - but we rarely connect them to the political insightfulness of Truman.

Truman was an organized man and created a greatly organized structure around him to foster his decision making. Basically, he is the one who created the system all the other presidents used to navigate in foreign policy or national security issues - and his system has been being intact until today. He was the transitional president under whose rule the USA reached its high status in the international scene - the 'leader of the free world'.

If this were not enough, Truman not only excelled in building up structures from chaos, he also found or kept in place the greatest people of his time  - a hugely important, yet most underestimated skill of politicians. Truman had Morgenthau, Marshall, Byrnes, Kennan - just to name a few of his staff. This list is like having a dream team in the 1950's. 

He didn't have an easy situation in domestic issues: end of war, troops coming home and they need to be disarmed and reintroduced into the civil society. The economy was transitioning from its wartime setup to a normal one - during the years '48-'50, civilians experienced shorts on many everyday essential products before the big economic boom started  (which is, by the way, also started during Truman's presidency).

Regarding his domestic policies, he was greatly progressive, should be in all the rooms where there is a Kennedy picture. (As it is usually the case with progressive presidents, he got a mainly conservative Congress to hinder his plans.) I will not discuss in great details how he was ahead of his time in a couple of issues - like housing, schools, civil rights for the minorities, and so on. He was so persistent on taking the progressive position that the Democratic Party almost split in the 1948 Democratic convention over the issue of civil rights.  (Finally, the debate did split the party, but only some 20 years later. Those southerners who walked away from Truman in the 1948 Convention were known as the Dixiecrats, whom would turn their back to the Democrats at the time of LBJ - over the same issue. Since then, Democrats haven't got a single vote back from the South.)

Okay, I know I can't get around the subject much more, we need to talk about the bomb, to put it into the narrative of his presidency. Let's start with the recognition of the fact that he was a vice president for just three months when Roosevelt died, during which period he rarely interacted with the President - obviously not knowing much about his wartime plans. (He wasn't even the first choice of Roosevelt for the VP position, but for the credit of Roosevelt, his first choice was also brilliant.)

Truman dropped the two bombs in August 1945 - when he was being a president for four shallow months. (In some other jobs, you are still on probation in the fourth month.) No, I am not saying this as of lessen the significance of his decision. I am just putting the frames in which I am aiming conclude regarding his act. 

The bomb is a controversial issue, to say the least - it fostered decades of academic and popular debates. J. Samuel Walker said in a 2005 article a perfect summary about the subject: 'The fundamental issue that has divided scholars over a period of nearly four decades is whether the use of the bomb was necessary to achieve victory in the war in the Pacific on terms satisfactory to the United States'. Those who support the decision argue that it led to a Japanese surrender - and saved lives by quickly ending the war. Those who are against is, usually argue with the moral angel - that atomic bombing is immoral and it was unnecessary from a military point of view. 

My personal opinion is that dropping the bomb had (and still has) obvious moral consequences, but someone at some point in those years would have dropped it anyway. I don't condemn Truman's act, I don't see it as a mistake or an immoral, evil thing. Don't get me wrong: this should never, ever happen again, and I probably wouldn't have been in favor of it if anyway present at the decision. But I respect that he made a decision, and can accept it. For me, this is the real meaning of leadership: these hardest moments when you have to choose between two or more wrong options, when you put yourself on the edge of the known things on Earth - and let history judge you later on. Face a moment like that and survive it - that's real leadership.

Truman faced the decision in a way that no other President had to - partly because after him every other President had the experience, what happens as a consequence of such an act. The weight of this decision had fallen on him at the dawn of the atomic era -  I don't think that anyone ever wanted to be in his shoes for those moments.

One of the most famous phrases the world inherited from Truman is the title of my blog post today - 'if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen'. He was reportedly using this phrase years before his presidency. I have goosebumps when I think of this, as it seems to me that this sentence is just the perfect metaphor of the turn of events in which he had to perform, and also of his attitude how he saw leadership. And we can all just be very grateful for the way he saw it.

Photos by David Dorosz, all but one were made about the displayed items of the Truman Presidential Libary. 
The Truman picture from 1945 is from the archive of the Truman Presidential Libary and Museum.

TOP 10 best thing in the States (after a month) - part 2.

This post is the second part of a list that we have written as a tool to help us battle our cultural shock. The two criteria for anything to get into this list were a) that we have experienced them first-hand in US soil and b) we also liked them. If you missed the first part of the list, click here. 

5. Being casual

I remember some family stories that tell about a time when some Hungarian soldiers (POWs I assume) met their Americain counterparts during one of the Word Wars. These are not really stories, rather frozen pictures of the moment my ancestors first met Americans: all nailed down how the Americain camp and army lacked the German (Prussian) level of discipline (which is a good thing, I am certain). I remember one picture particularly: American soldiers were standing lazily next to a wall (or similar) chewing bubble gums, looking very approachable and friendly in a carefree way.

I long forgot that bedside story of my childhood, but since I arrived, I've kept remembering it. People seem to be more relaxed here that in the Old Continent. You have the impression they don't stress much over little things. Casual and cool are the best ways to describe their approach to the things of life. The same applies to their relationship with status. Relatively high-status people are having a conversation with you as if none of the difference existed. They don't expect extreme politeness or other schemes of formality. Many times they ask you to 'drop by and say hello' - something that in Hungary would come across for you as a great honor, and here you feel it's just business as usual. 

I am not saying that status is not important in this country - but it seems to have a different manifestation than in countries with a strong authoritarian/feudal heritage.

The casual way appears also how they communicate with you - somehow more to the point, with less stress how to express everyday requests. There is still small talk of course, and all the other fittings of a conversation. The difference rather comes once it's over, you have a much clearer sense where you stand (and what you have to do) - compared to, say, the feeling you have at the end of a conversation with a British.

4. The New York Times

We originally intended to buy a Wahington Post, but every time I went to the local grocery shop called Straub's, all the Washington Posts were gone. So, I bought a New York times instead, and this has become a weekly habit. 

Okay, I have to say, I have had a crush on foreign newspapers since a long time. I purchased an unreasonable amount of French ones when I lived in Brussels in 2013. But even before, I remember collecting a Saturday edition of  the Guardian from a trash bin in London (I was 19 and on a budget trip). Since coming of age, I was truly passionate about any type of printed foreign daily or weekly - and I visualized my coming life as surrounded by great pieces of journalism. 

So imagine me getting my hands on a New York Times. Every single morning I get out of my bed, do my breakfast and coffee, get into the armchair. I pull my legs up and indulge in all the different articles. Certainly, I do appreciate great journalism (during the history of the paper, they had a record number of  117 Pulitzer Prices). But my cravings in the morning come from a deeper layer. Just touching and smelling the paper makes me happy and joyful. The paper is like a passport, a living piece of history: I don't feel like an outsider for those moments (hours) when I am reading. (Also helps me tolerate "the thing" Americans keep calling coffee.)

(Coincidently, our first US TIME magazine just arrived yesterday, as a result of transferring our Hungarian address delivery to our St. Louis home - another nice example of fast, and no-hassle customer service).

3. The Americain home

The typical, middle-class (and upper-middle class) Americain home is a stable source of delight and pleasure for me. First, for its practical setup - Americans seems to have inbuilt storage places for problems Europeans use furniture. E. g. take your bedroom, my European friend, where you probably have a wardrobe as a piece of furniture. Here we store our clothes in two small rooms, dedicated specifically for this purpose.

In the bathroom - you would purchase a cabinet in Europe, whereas here I have a door with a shelved space behind to hide everything there. This is also the solution at the front door: one extra door for hiding shoes, umbrellas, coats, and various other objects. 

The marvelous thing about these tiny surprise places that they already calculate with your need to hide things. Furthermore, you don't have to dedicate extra space from the bedroom, bathroom, whichever room to store things that you obviously need to store. I love that someone (the architect, probably) was smart enough to think ahead. You also don't have to acquire an advanced level of  'IKEA's smart space saving solutions' course, measure everything three times and spend days to find the exact piece that fit into your home. Skipping that part of moving in saves energy, space, time and money. Just wonderful. 

The second great thing about the Americain home is how big and spacious it is. I especially love their concept about the bathroom -  it's a private place belonging to each bedroom, as if an attachment. I really appreciate this privacy of the homes. Therefore the ads in real estate magazines describe houses as of how many bedrooms and bathrooms are in. 

And then, say, you walk into a Container store - or to any other organizational heaven. If you are like me and appreciate a nicely and neatly organized space, you'll get addicted. (Dave banned me out of those stores for the sake of our budget.) These companies offer solutions to problems you long have given up on or never knew you had it. In the US, there are people who could make a living out of giving organizational tips to your home. 

And I don't even dare to mention the neverending options how to decorate your home (Halloween is coming) - if furnishing and home décor a true passion of yours, then the USA is your heaven.

2. A gallon of milk

Compared to its lack of significance, it's funny it ended up on ranking two of this list. Milk here comes in forms of a gallon and a half  (one gallon is 3,76 liters).

So, the two of us are great milk drinkers. In one single day, we are able to drink a liter of milk without much difficulty. I love the taste of it and cannot imagine a day without putting it to at least my coffee. (Please Readers, just accept the fact that we love milk, and do not start the diet debate.)

When we were doing grocery back in Europe, where milk usually comes in a liter, the shout 'I go and take care of the milk' meant that I walk to the dairy products and buy 10-12 pieces of it. 

Here, two pieces cover our weekly consumption. No more morning when I realize there is no milk, although my coffee is done. Logistics of them are much easier - you carry two pieces instead of five times that amount. The bottle itself is also more ergonomic to carry, and it's translucent - I have a much better sense how much I have left. 

1. The squirrels 
They are tiny, furry, and abnormally cute. And they are everywhere! In the trees, in the grass, in the parking lots, in the university buildings. During my afternoon jogs, they jog along with me on the trees. Based on my experience, they are not only present in St. Louis, also accommodated in Iowa fields and Kansas City as well. Since I 've met them, I don't need my daily dose of  puppies or cats on Facebook - they easily provide the local cuteness factor. Obviously, American squirrels got used to the presence of cars and humans, they are much less fearful than their European counterparts  - but it is still difficult to take a photo of them. (Dave relentlessly trying to catch them, though.) When we asked locals about their presence, they just shrugged, saying, squirrels are everywhere in this country.

Photos by David Dorosz and www.pestworld.org