What would you do?

At the end of the audiobook version I listened to of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas there was an interview with the author that made me think even more deeply. 

The interviewer said:

I always say that you don’t hand in your reading passport at 14 to draw an adult one. Or the age or twelve or whenever. You seamlessly travel up the ladder and every step you take frees your mind further, doesn’t it. 

The power of books has been something I've enjoyed for a long time. I have never thought of it quite as freeing my mind, but I like that a lot. 

In the interview, they also discussed some of the criticism people have had for the book. One line of criticism deals with the level of complacency in the book, the idea that no one did anything.  

There are examples in the book of people actively choosing not to do anything: 

“...do whatever your father tells you, we must all just keep ourselves safe until this is all over. That’s what I intend to do anyway. What more can we do than that after all? It’s not up to us to change things.”

My gut reaction: "Isn’t it up to us to change things? Even if we can’t do everything, we can do something."

In the interview, the author said that we'd all like to think that we would stand up and do something. But would we?

I'm one of those people that likes to think I would do something. Every time I read a book set in WWII I want to think I'd be the one with a hidden cupboard or feeding people living in my attic or something, anything. 

Is there a way to know?

For me, I have a clear example of when I did not. There was a time in junior high when I could have stood up against a bully on behalf of someone else, and I didn’t.

I remember wanting to. And I remember being scared of what could happen to me if I did.

From my journal in Jan 1999: 

"these two trouble makers were throwing rocks at the two kids that were sitting in front of me. They were actually more like gravel than anything, but when they missed they would usually hit me and it hurt really bad!"

 

What if we don't stand up to the bully? What do we do? 

Labeling ourself a lost cause and continuing onward with our head down "just keep[ing] ourselves safe until this is all over" isn't what I want to do. I want to learn and become better.

This makes me think of a habit I formed later, while in high school. 

Teenagers are not always nice. On more than one occasion I found myself sitting in a car or around a lunch table and people would say unkind things about someone who wasn't there. Usually someone we all knew. One time I spoke up, "You know, this makes me wonder what you say about me when I'm not around."

Silence.

Sometimes it lead to open conversation about the value of speaking positively about others. Sometimes people apologized to me, or reasured me they didn't say mean things behind my back. I don't know if it changed what people thought or said in the long run, but every time I pulled out that phrase it stopped the negative conversation. 

Should 9-year-old Bruno have realized more about the situation he and his family were in? Maybe. 

Should his parents and the adults in his life have told him more? I don't know.

I do know that it would have been better if he didn't have to be in the situation in the first place. And that is something that adults have more responsibility for than children. 

Something else I've been thinking about is the power in moving forward. 

Our lives are full of opportunities to make choice, to help or not, to speak up or not, to seek understanding, to share with others. We get to make decisions over and over again. And if (okay, when, let's be real) we make one we don't like or aren't proud of, we can try again. And we can do what we can to make up for, repair, or fix things when possible. When that's not possible, we can pay forward to as many people as possible a larger heart, a kinder soul and plant seeds of goodness.