Skip to main content

The Pea who Hated Candy


Read to the end and the title will make sense. I promise :)
The author Amy Krouse Rosenthal earlier this year at the age of 51 due to cancer. I had never heard of Amy until about two weeks before she died yet I felt a tremendous sadness at her passing. From what I’ve heard of her though, she was a woman who made the world a little brighter.

It turns out that Amy was a children’s author, which is what surprises me because I spent the past two years swallowing all children’s books I could lay my hands on. Somehow none of her books ever crossed my path. I heard about her because of an essay she wrote for the New York Times in which she wrote an imaginary dating profile for her husband, who was going to have to keep living once she passed away. Amy’s love and tenderness poured out from every word on the page. Despite the cancer and medication that were both eating away at her ability to form coherent sentences, she wrote with a poignancy I can only hope for in my own writing. Through her words, I could see she was a woman of incredible strength, love and passion.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--W66jENwz--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/ptiosnmdifqlwaghif8l.jpg But this essay, while among my favorite pieces of writing, is not the part about Amy that struck me most. Amy gave a TED talk that I found while reading her obituary. The talk is about the “seven notes of life” as she calls them. They are broad statements about how to view the life you are living. As far as TED Talks go, it might not be the most revolutionary. I am not left feeling I can be a better human being after watching it or that I have a better understanding of how the world works.
I wondered, then, what the value of the TED Talk was. Since coming to Finland, I have found myself increasingly judging the worth of things based on how much knowledge, ideas or competencies they have. Our classes are all focused on research and scientific inquiry. I have begun to feel that every comment we make in class needs to be based on research or have some kind of analytical contribution to the discussion.
Amy’s talk was not analytical. The ideas she brought up were loosely connected, sometimes dubiously so, and many were broad ideas that I have heard so many times before that they sound like platitudes at this point. As I listened though, it dawned on me that not everything in life is about contributing in such an academic way. Amy’s talk was full of hope and joy. She talked about appreciating the little things, like finding a book that matches the title of her presentation, or appreciating that the word “OK” when turned on its side looks like a person. She also talked about “beckoning the lovely” because what you look for, you will eventually find.
Her talk was like her children’s books. Perhaps simplistic in its message but there was beauty in the message. Children’s books teach the youngest humans on the planet about what is important in the world. They are simple in their message and their power lies in this simplicity. Deep thinking is important but it is also important to appreciate the little things. Like the squirrel eating acorns in the backyard, the colors of the sunset reflecting off the water, or the way a child thinks that she is going to visit downtown England.
I am going to strive to keep this balance. In my classes I will try to think critically and scientifically. But I will also try to appreciate the world around me. This includes the differences in ways of people’s thinking. Some are naturally inclined toward the scientific, some naturally toward the small moments. Both are important views in creating a loving world. In a class I took in college on writing creative non-fiction, we had to write short pieces on the smallest moment we possible could. It’s these small moments, after all, that together make up a life time.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/417FATPBS0L.jpgAs a side note, I recommend reading Amy’s books. After listening to the talk I had to go and find one of her picture books to read (Which I listened to on youtube). I found one about a little pea who doesn’t want to eat his candy but eventually forces it down when tempted with a big bowl of his favorite dessert: spinach. It’s adorable for its whimsical fantasy. And yet despite the fantasy every child can relate to it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dual Identities

A picture of my parents and cousin from Diwali. In my house we celebrate Diwali and have a small Christmas. I don't know many Finnish people, even after being here for five months. But I feel that I've done pretty well, considering I'm in an international program and can say I have four Finnish friends (one isn't quite a friend, but he has helped me out quite a bit) and I can say I have nascent Finnish language skills. I've grown comfortable here, though I still feel like a foreigner. One man who has been living in Finland for almost a decade came here from an African country for his masters. He married a Finn but cannot speak any Finnish himself. And yet, I have the sense that he still does not feel like he belongs here. In one of our classes, he told us how he still gets called racial slurs walking down the street. He commented offhandedly one day “I don’t know what I am.” I understand this feeling, to an extent. I have never been called a racial slur b...

Finland's mark

Today in Finnish class I went up to a Nepali classmate and asked him if he knew a Nepali song that I have been obsessed with for the past two weeks. I told him that I was in love with the song but couldn’t understand a word so could he please translate it? In the middle of asking my question I realized he had no idea what I was talking about and that this was really awkward but it was too late to back out so I ploughed ahead anyway. The result was that I avoided him for the rest of class. But part of me didn’t care. Being in a new country gives you thick skin for awkward encounters. Being in a new country also shapes you and molds you into a different version of yourself. A friend of mine wisely said that “where you live leaves a mark on you.” I’m still only a couple months into my two year long stay here in Finland but it is leaving a mark already. On our way to Naantali, a town 18 km away from Turku. There are the little things. I drink coffee (well, half of it i...

A Few of my Favorite Things

I just came back from a trip to Estonia. It was my first trip where I was completely alone the entire time. No travel companions, no friend anticipating my arrival, no one else dictating my schedule, unless you count my rather overbearing couchsurfing host. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is a pretty town to visit but I think the biggest thing I learned was that I prefer traveling with people. Places are more fun to see and food is more fun to eat when the experience is shared. That being said, I don’t think I would have done what turned out being my favorite thing from the trip if I had had anyone else with me: taking pictures of doors. To be clear, these aren’t just any doors. They are colorful and happy. Each door I saw was unique, either in color scheme or detailing. Here are a few examples: And here is a collage of some of my pictures put together.  I took 30 door pictures so this is only about half. This whole project started when I chan...