You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes when you die?
8.6 minutes. That's approximately the amount of time you have after your heart stops beating before brain function ceases. When we die, our eyes close, our body is paralyzed, and if we're lucky enough to die of old age; we will do so with loved ones standing over us, mourning, as we're lost for all time. But, we're not actually gone yet; not for 8.6 minutes. The brain continues to function for 8.6 minutes after the body dies. That's practically a lifetime to live through past emotions; a last poetic gift of the experiences and memories you've collected in this life. It will either be 8.6 minutes of tragic regret, or something so transcendental, maybe one last synapse will fire a final smile.
When I visited my friend Christie in Belgium, I noticed her bucket list taped to the desk. She, like myself is what you call “life addicts.” Us “lifers” spent the afternoon of my departure trying to find her a cheap seat so she could join me in Cairo. It was on both our lists. After checking that one off, I've now replaced it with meeting the Dalai Lama. No, that's actually number two. Number one has always been to do good and changing the world.
For a longtime, I wanted to write a book. I'm now finishing my second. It's about my tragic fascination with another one of my bucket list items, living abroad. There I said it, and as corny as that sounds, I want the freedom to try it and to see myself in another culture, to understand others by living through their lives. I ache to do more, to feel more, to be more than who I am right now. To punch a hole in the wall of expectation and live a life with no regrets.
Somewhere on the list is to love more. Love my children, love my love, and love myself.
Then there's sailing across the Atlantic, and driving to the tip of South America someday. I also want to go dig wells for the thirsty in Africa, visit the Kremlin, and spend one night outside sleeping in Champ Du Mars, under the stars, and the Eiffel Tower. I'm also dead set on writing a book on homeless immigrants by living in the Brussels metro for three months, if I can only interest a publisher.
In the end, Christie's, mine, or anyone's bucket lists for that matter, are really about the same thing: benchmarks for existence. Collecting life's moments inside ourselves for our final performance. If life, like art, isn't about all the wonderful joys, all the laughs, all the tears that we feel and experience, then what's the point? Because in the end, we all get the same 8.6 minutes to rewind the story of our life, and believe me, mine is going to be a blockbuster.
You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes when you die?
What if this, right now- what we’re living is that flash?
My real name is Stella. Artois, yes, like the beer- not "Candy", which you have come to know me at the club. I of course wish we could have clarified this at the beginning of our relationship. My mother conceived me one night on a bar counter in Houston, next to NASA, in 1973, with a French engineer passing through town. We always referred to my non-existent father as "Pierre", but the truth is, mother never actually got his name during the one night stand. There's still an occasional twinkle in her eye when she recounts the story of that fateful night. Usually this occurs when she arrives to the part about his French accent, only to immediately frown upon realizing that he then disappeared, leaving her "knocked up", and was never heard from again. She always finishes the story with, "Stella, never trust the French, they're frogs!"
My mother arrived last Sunday for her usual visit, and as normal, through the course of conversation; she persisted to advise me exactly what she thought of me. I've found, through my many years of her rearing, that I cannot win at arguments such as these where my own character is assassinated through cynicism. This time was no different, as I silently crawled into the kitchen in my mobile home to shield myself from her sharp ammunition, just like I had almost every weekend since I was child. While I'll admit that many times in the past, I've felt hurt by her unusual style of parenting; I can attest that this particular occurrence left me even more painfully perplexed, awash in my own self-doubt. Am I really like that? I knew the answer was no. I thought the answer was no. Now the seeds of self-doubt were planted. I was a positive person! Wasn't I? A week earlier I had written a letter to my dear friend Charlotte expressing optimism, beauty, and the gifts of living in this world. Mother did not now this, and I did not care to bring up Charlotte again. She is after-all, not American, and while merely my childhood pen-pal; Charlotte represented everything wrong with me to my mother, because Charlotte was nothing like her. Mother also was always a bit fearful I'd drop everything and take Charlotte up on her offer of living in Antwerp, leaving her behind. "Imagine that! Stella Artois, living in Europe!"- I'd laugh to myself in private, pretending from atop of my bed to channel La Mode as I wrapped a scarf around my neck, and then cringing when my deep southern twang could not properly pronounce "bonjour!'
My worst fear, is I'm not who I believe I am, that I'm not a good person. So when you, the love of my life, at least for the last week or so, crawled into my body; I asked you to tell me the truth. I expected an endorsement that indeed my life stood for something positive. As silly as that sounds, that's what I needed. I needed consolation, I needed confirmation that my whole world wasn't inside out, yet apparently the truth, according to you, is that, my life fails to reflect such attributes.
So I'm faced with the realization, that I'm this horrible monster, or merely surrounded by people insistent on my own failure, to retain me, to master me. Do you see what you two have done to me? I've created a conspiracy out of my own life. I'm going mad trying to reconcile what I believe to be my reality, with what people now tell me that they think me to be.
So I spent much of last night crying, while you slept beside me. Trying to figure it all out between the dogs howling and your snoring. I wrote out a list of things I did good, and those things which by my own actions resulted in a negative outcome. Then I realized I really didn't care. If I believed I was a good person, then that's all that mattered, right? What I need now is people around me who see me for the person I could be. Maybe I do sing bad, and you will always cringe when you look at my crooked teeth or wrinkled smile, but somewhere out there is someone who hears my song, and doesn't cover their ears. They don't hear finger nails on a chalk board, they hear an opera singer, a rock star, or a sweet lullaby. Somewhere out there, that same person, sees me from just a little be different angle than you do and finds me beautiful, wonderful, maybe even amazing. I'm positive of that.
So by the time you read this, I'll be gone. On some train, or plane, in some foreign country, in some place where Stella Artois is more than me, more than beer, one night stands, or just some story. Maybe one day, our paths will cross again? Maybe, I'll even see my mother again when this letter causes her to abandon her life of indebtedness in that Houston bar, and comes in search of me. There in some tiny in village that she's tracked me down to, she'll walk up to some local woman with a photo of me, a good kind woman in my mother's opinion, and ask her, "Have you seen my daughter?" And I'll reply, "It's me mother! Stella Artois! You've found the real me."
The USS California is seen on fire after an attack by t
he Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941, in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
This is the story of how my grandfather died. This is the story of war on earth. This is the story of the bravest man I knew: my grandfather.
Several years ago, almost a life-time away now it seems I stood there and watched my grandmother barely able to stand as she pressed her hand against the wall screaming and crying, reaching into the void for her husband. On the other side of that wall was my grandfather, a WWII veteran lost for all time in the void of space and time. His life-less empty shell of a body carried away for the last time in a casket by his grandchildren; loaded into a hearse and driven away to be cremated. But, grandpa was far from dead. There stood, in his absence: us, the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of a man who went to war, who risked his life, who gave up so much so that we could live. This however was little consolation for my Grandmother who was now so grief-stricken she cursed the wall and vowed to reach through it. If she could not pull my grandfather back through, then she would follow him into it. Death would not do them part. As Dylan Thomas might say, “death shall have no dominion.”
My grandparents weren't strangers to breaking down walls. When my grandfather enlisted with the Navy, he met the biggest obstacle of his life- my grandmother, a waitress in a naval pub/dance floor. To borrow from Top Gun, she “saw new hot shots every 8 weeks” and had no interest in the advances of the boyish grins just out of basic training. But grandpa wasn't just anyone and on one starry evening he showed up with a “borrowed” Willys Jeep before her shift. “you just can't expect me to get in?”, she asked him, the story goes. He retorted “If you don't you'll spend the rest of your life wondering.” Apparently Grandpa's psychological warfare worked, and they drove to a airstrip where he managed an impromptu dinner of bread and cheap beer watching military planes land and stargazing from the hood of a Willys MB. He pointed up at the stars and said “You and me, we're just specks of light in the darkness of space.” If my grandfather's charm had softened my grandmother's reluctance, she didn't let on and stopped his attempt at a kiss by saying she “didn't see the point kissing men she couldn't see herself marrying.” The next day he would be deployed as apart of tactical exercise and training in the South Pacific. They would write to one another the next few months and during December 1941, he arrived back at the bar only to surprise her from behind and request a dance. By now my grandmother had capitulated to her heart through his words and quite likely, they were heading to their happily ever after when war walked in the door: Pearl Harbor had been attacked, the Earth was at war and according to the story, Grandpa then turned to her and said “looks like that kiss might just have to wait” then walked out the threshold.
War; I think, is about love. If not love, then the antithesis of love. You must love something to fight for it or else hate something enough to die for it. War without sacrifice or risk of sacrifice defies the human experience. You must risk losing it all, to have something ripped from your hands and torn apart in front of you for it to be meaningful. The truth is the events that superseded that evening in the bar was rarely talked about by my grandfather. On one occasion my father recalls his attempt to take my grandfather to visit the USS Wilmington which sits permanently anchored off the shore of North Carolina when he came to visit in the 1990s. The answer was “no”. Grandpa had absolutely no intention of resurfacing memories he had purposely forgotten. Memories so grotesque it's difficult to imagine that they were my own families story of this world. Maybe more legend than fact, better articulated with each retelling. This I suppose is common among the families of war veterans, and deservingly so. It's how we want to remember our veterans, and as they say “when legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
In this Dec. 7, 1941 file photo, the battleship USS Arizona
belches smoke as it topples over into the sea during
a Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor
We know his best friend died in his arms while at war, and countless friends were killed, but the clarity- the vividness of detail was something only grandpa knew and he censored, and protected us from. We knew it had a profound effect on him though just by looking at photos prior to his World War II deployment compared with after the war. A grinning young man transformed into the stoic face of my grandfather as if his wrinkles were made of war. The war had shaped who he was, and who he became, perhaps on some core genetic level which would later be passed on to us. Some of the stories throughout the years yielded a bit of luminance upon the war he fought, but much of what was experienced; was never ever told. It was mostly factoids where he'd criticize the cop on television for how many rounds were in his gun, or Rambo for holding the grenade longer than five seconds. He was a master of tying knots, and was the master of handshakes. You don't hug Grandpa... oh no, there is protocol with grandpa! The darker side of war, the unspeakable bits were rarely shared other than with grandma. Only after his death would she share some of former unspeakable moments in his life. My grandfather's best friend mortally wounded and in anguishing pain grabbing my grandfather's hand- begging that he ends his misery, and asking him to tell his family he died bravely. Holding death, witnessing the extinguishing of existence and my grandfather somehow then managing to stand up again and replace his friend's position manning artillery. His destiny was to survive while others perished, the war became personal, and justified as he witnessed death around him. He was no longer a soldier fighting a war for his country- but a man, a single human with a vendetta against the evil he had witnessed. For any force capable of such vile must be pure evil I imagine he must have thought. When orders came down of a joint allied attack to take back France he quickly found a way to be apart of it. The night before operation he felt that he wasn't going to be coming back, and wrote a final letter to my grandmother. Knowing he was likely writing his concluding words he chose to say “I now know why we fight, or more importantly why I fight. I fight so that someday you can give that kiss to the man you're going to marry. I hope someday you find him, because that's something worth dying for. Remember me as that speck of light in the night.” The next day was D-Day.
Under those same stars on June 6, 1944, the landing of Normandy commenced. It served as “the single largest amphibious landing in the history of war.” My grandfather later remarked an often used phrase to describe that day: it was “the day the world stood united together against a common evil.”. This was the end of times, this was Armageddon and my grandfather was kneeling down in a landing craft vehicle under the full moon armed with the intentions and the ability to protect the world as he knew it.
The English channel was filled with an armada as the dawn broke over the bow of the rough waters. Sea-sick soldiers climbed netting down into swamped landing vehicles that required the use of their helmets to bail out the water. According to the recollections of my grandfather via my family, a silent sand filled beach gave way to mayhem just shortly after the first landing craft vehicle's barge gates lowered and the soldiers waded in. The ocean midst transformed to the smoke of land mines. The crack of the the waves were over-powered by the sounds of guns. “And then?”, I ask. But according to everyone in my family Grandpa recounts nothing of the events that would follow on the French shore. In the 30 years up to his death he maintained that the run up to the barbed wire was “a dance with shrapnel where he imagined he was back at the bar dancing with Grandma.”vi The events of this historic day had been rewritten in my grandfather's mind into dancing with a lovely woman three-thousand miles away. My grandfather's account of the war seems almost poetic, almost sort of beautiful in contrast to the accounts of entrails and dismembered bodies upon the beach you watch on tv. He wasn't fighting against the Germans that day, he was fighting for love. Fighting for grandma. What is war with no purpose, no one to fight for? What is love if there is no sacrifice?
As they say, the rest is history. My grandfather would end up surviving that day and eventually return back home to find grandma waiting. They would run up to one another, embrace, and alas kiss. He would propose, and marry then have three children, 6 grandchildren and 6 great grand-children living out the American dream. A dream uniquely his, born on the sands of Normandy.
The final battle for my grandparents occurred just a few short years ago after my grandfather passed away. This time, he could not save himself and died from heart complications. I like to believe his heart loved so much it wore out. My grandmother became depressed and eventually quit taking her medicine, and shortly thereafter we lost her. Her final words were “I'm coming to find you Don.” She left this world under the belief she would find a way to save him, just as he saved all of us. Indeed none of us could find fault with her logic despite the obvious.
WWII was a war about walls. Walls around people who believe they're better, against those who are different, fought by allied countries who also artificially created walls and borders. In fact the only true wall is that which separates humans which we cannot control is death. In the end all of us, German, Jewish, American or Japanese end up on the other side of that wall. Our bodies incinerated, our ashes spread, we become apart of the Earth, the soil which we rage war on. From space, this Earth is but a speck of light- a star. We are that speck of light. I often look up at the nights sky and find two twinkling stars and think of my grandparents, and their sacrifices which have gotten me where I am today.
Because of their existence, their journey, I exist. Last year I chose to travel to France and stood out under those same stars to gain some perspective on my grandparents deaths. Here I stood where men such as my grandfather brought down the walls of fascism, of genocide, of man-made borders. His contribution evident as I journeyed from Belgium to France through the Schengen zone, made possible by a post WWII agreement (The Schengen agreement, a broader expansion of a 1948 accord to eliminate borders) that sought to tear down “walls” which returned Europe to a pre-WWI state where you could travel from from Paris to Saint Petersberg without a passport. Here I was traveling freely through the walls that had been torn down by the successes of my grandfather. As my Eurostar train crossed the English Channel in complete darkness I had several minutes to take in the gravity of the situation. Just a few feet above the Chunnel were the waters my grandfather crossed to risk his life and now his DNA in me, a part of him was back. As we pulled into London, and traveled by Underground which platforms and stations doubled as bomb-shelters during the Blitz, we made our way by rail to Wales, home of Dylan Thomas who writes about that final wall, death:
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
The above is a partial work of fiction based on real events.
“...they eat with the greatest possible rapidity, and in total silence...”
-Fanny Trollope
“They wolfed down their food, cramming corn bread into their sloppy maws during meals that were devoured in silence, punctuated only by slurps, grunts, scraping knives, and hacking coughs. “
-Simon Schamaii
On Christmas day 1827, Fanny Trollope arrived in “The New World” from Europe, and wrote a detailed account of her travels and observations of the newly formed country and its people a mere fifty one years after its independence from England. One could argue, what Trollope witnessed was the early moments of a country doomed to an epidemic of obesity. Two words tend to stick out from her chronicles of her encounter with American cuisine and foods: “abundant” and “inferior”.
“...for excellence, abundance, and cheapness, can hardly, I should think, be surpassed in any part of the world, if I except the luxury of fruits, which are very inferior to any I have seen in Europe. There are no butchers, fishmongers, or indeed any shops for eatables, except bakeries...”iii
Is this the moment America sealed its fate, when it veered off from its European roots in some post-war adolescent spite of independence combined with an almost careless attitude towards unrestricted consumption? Ignorance of the consequences would only last for a couple centuries for this naive country and in less than ten generations, the obesity epidemic in America would be the cause of more deaths than its wars (112,000 die per yeariv), slow the country's productivity and lead to a historic precedent with The United States becoming the most densely populous of obese and overweight people in the history of the world.v Good going forefathers!
What's worse is The U.S. ignored Trollope then, and today despite our enlightenment in science and health, we appear to be continuing to neglect advice in exchange for instant gratification. I am reminded of the dystopian future of the Disney movie “WALL-E” where humans become too overweight to walk requiring levitating recliners rather than their legs for movement.
Shelby Forthright:
"I'm sure a few laps around the ship's jogging
track will get you back in shape in no time!" Captain McCrea:
"We have a jogging track?" vi
Consumerism in America would like you to indulge the fantasy of a future where your self image is a photo-shopped model and the processed foods we eat are healthy, but in reality, we can barely recognize ourselves let alone the food we eat. Today, we generally think of our foods arriving to us partially already prepared. The companies preparing these foods do so for profit, not for health. We are, after all, a capitalist nation. Worse yet, some of us rarely even use our kitchens other than storage for snack foods or drinks. We don't even expel energy to cook our meals. We turn to fast food; and that is turning 66%vii of Americans overweight and on the path to chronic obesity.
Prior to discovering Trollope's work, I had formed a working hypothesis I labeled the “box theory”, based on my personal experiences and the differences between The U.S. and Europe. I argued that much of America's obesity epidemic, was the result to The U.S.'s lack of social skills: education, communication, and personal interaction. Trollope's quote that begins this paper suggests this isn't a recent phenomenon. Americans typically live in isolated boxes of tract homes where we eat our preprocessed boxed food from a “big-box” retail grocer. We observe the outside world (rather than participate in it) through a box called the television. When we're forced to leave, we get in a “box” with four wheels (typically not public or communal transportation), isolated once again. We go to work in our cubicles, then go to lunch-break and order our food through a drive through with a square window. The metaphor could go on and on, but tomorrow like the movie “Groundhog Day” many of us will get up and do it all over again. We avoid social contact, we avoid conversation, and we've built an infrastructure on this deviant behavior. One that lends itself to obesity. People driving around parking lots for hours on end; too lazy to park and walk. Single occupants driving cars, sparse public transportation, and absolutely no walkability in our cities. Disagree? Consider this statistic on American walkability:
People in the five most obese states make about 5.2 percent of all trips by bike or on foot, according to data published recently in a 2010 benchmarking report. In contrast, people in the five least obese states made twice as many trips -- 10.2 percent of them -- by bike or on foot.viii
We hide nutritional information on the back of foods. We have politicians like Sarah Palin who argue Americans have a “God given right” to be fat.ix If we never think to look outside the box then how can we ever see ourselves as others see us?
While both the Europeans and Americans are suffering from an obesity epidemic; metropolitan areas of Europe tend to have healthier foods, and less overweight citizens. I've voyaged to many western European nations, and found the lifestyle to be one of the major reasons for our differences in obesity. A infrastructure based on walking, with less cars, requiring social interaction on public transit and a national collective willingness to tackle issues like transportation, and health-care that bridge into their nutrition and wellness. In contrast, recently here in America, a Colorado infant named Alex was denied health-care coverage for a pre-existing condition at the age of four months old. His condition, was obesity:
“They joked that when he is ready for solid food, they will start him on Slim-Fast. “x
From nutritional labels on the front of food, to the U.K. ban on trans-fats, comparable fast-foods like Big Macs or Domino's pizza are several grams less fat than the American equivalent. (As of this writing it's 5 grams less.xi) Visit K.F.C. in Belgium and be offered the choice of tomates cerise (cherry tomatoes) as an option on their version of the “dollar menu” (1€ menu). Europe has chosen “fight over flight”, and they start it at an early age. In the U.K. after their public schools switched to nutritionally balanced foods, the students preferred the healthier meals. xii In nearby Scotland, sweets and sugared drinks are banned in all schools.
The social aspect in Europe continues to influence eating habits. Take for instances the soiree though not exclusive to French culture (found common in Italian and Spanish cultures too) it is a four to five hour gathering with friends over dinner. It has less to do with food, and more to do with conversation and social interaction. Served smaller portions in comparison to American standards, the meal could be more described as a elongated snacking session among friends over drinks. Even in name, the British pub, short for public house embodies community before consumption, while the American “bar”, was named for the counter barring theft of alcohol. While Americans dress in their Billy May's infomercial procured Snuggies™, and settle in for prime-time TV of a jaundiced doughnut loving Homer Simpson, our European counterparts are traversing their cities on foot to meet friends, and engage in life outside the “box”. Here we've chosen to ignore and shy away, even to hide in our cars, homes, and cubicles while ridiculing anyone who might suggest that: we, though a great country, should consider the American way negotiable when non-Americans succeed and we fail.
It's not like it's not obvious too. We can't even fit in our seats on airplanes or theaters. Kevin Smith, known more commonly as Silent Bob from the movie “Clerks” was removed from a Southwest flight last year due to safety regulations in regards to his weight:
'Dear @SouthwestAir, I flew out in one seat, but right after issuing me a standby ticket, Oakland Southwest attendant Suzanne (wouldn’t give last name) told me Captain Leysath deemed me a “safety risk”. Again: I’m way fat… But I’m not THERE just yet. But if I am, why wait til my bag is up, and I’m stated WITH ARM RESTS DOWN. In front of a packed plane with a bunch of folks who’d already I.d.ed me as “Silent Bob.”'
-Kevin Smith via Twitter
Then there's the recent Federal Transportation Authority recommendation to manufacturers of buses who provide public transportation to upgrade the tires, and chassis to support the new more obese Americans.
The Federal Transit Administration, based in Washington, proposed raising the assumed average weight per passenger...
...suggested it increase the average passenger weight “to an amount that more accurately reflects the changes to the average weight of Americans over the last several decades.”
Bus manufacturers, may choose to upgrade chassis, tires, wheels, brakes or suspensions to carry more weight, the transit agency said in the proposed rule. xiii
Oddly, at the same time the British are proposing smaller seats on their trains.xiv And, it gets worse: obesity is partially to blame for global warming:
We tend to think of obesity only as a public-health problem, but many of its causes overlap with those of global warming.xv
What can be done though? We're too scared to change. Too embarrassed to admit we might have got it all wrong. Just this last week a man died fused to his living room chair:
A 43-year-old morbidly obese man in Ohio died after police found him literally fused to a chair. He reportedly had not moved from the chair in two years, causing his skin became stuck to the chair's fabric over time.
The man had two roommates, one of which was his girlfriend, who fed him because he was unable to move from the chair.xvi
Change begins with our willingness to accept correction. If not as a unified country then by each individual itself. We must first admit we're wrong, and that we're apart of it. I myself am obese. The result of my own ignorance and actions, it was only when confronted with how people in other countries live their lives was I able to properly judge the value of my own decisions. With my choice to step outside the box and experience the world, the world has changed me. I've seen the reasons that enable Americans into obesity, and our attitude of entitlement preventing our change. The way we choose to see ourselves often limits who we can be.
Whether the government has made the people what they are, or
whether the people have made the government what it is, to suit
themselves, I know not;
-Fanny Trollope
Unlike Trollope's doubt of America's ability to change, I believe the answer lies within our individual capacity to influence one another. Whether country to country or person to person. The choices we make define who we are, they shape our past and our future, more importantly they shape us more than obesity ever could.
“Every choice that I make, changes the course I take.” -Lily Frost
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...” is the epic phrase made famous by author Charles Dickens who used it to describe the time period of The French Revolution. In 1793 when the fictional character Sydney Carton of A Tale of Two Cities sacrifices himself on the guillotine for the love of his life, Napoleon Bonaparte age 24, had just begun to fulfill his legacy as a revolutionary. By 1795, in a maddening state of love, Napoleon had begun to rip apart the world and rebuild it in the name of Joséphine de Beauharnais; as no sacrifice was so great to prove his love. Indeed his internal revolution did bring out the best in him, and the worst. For Napoleon the lover and Napoleon the revolutionary were the same man unlike Sydney Carton and Charles Danay; and it is this distinction that would change the structure of France into a manifestation of Napoleon's heart.
'I am worried and unhappy. I feel numb. Come to me without delay. Only the sight of you will cure me. ' -Clisson and Eugénie by Napoleon Bonaparte
In fact Napoleon began his rise to a revolutionary in an eerie similarity to the book by fleeing mainland France in 1793, then spending ten days in 1794 under house arrest. It's during this time Napoleon would write Le Souper de Beaucaire. It was also during this time we begin to see a new Napoleon rise from the ashes of war, and conflict. Injured in a successful attempt to purge the city of British troops from Toulan, Napoleon had discovered a secret to winning war. Rather than play a game of a series of chance coincidences, outmaneuvering the opposing troops- he would simply destroy them. A deathly game of chess had been turned into a concept whereby the infliction of mass casualty and damage to infrastructure proved success.
Heroes are not born heroes, they are made heroes by reluctance, and such I believe is the case with (young) Napoleon. Exemplified in the war with Vendee, Napoleon was brilliant enough to avoid unfavorable postings or situations which might have killed less clever men. He spent his time writing romance and seemed almost distracted of the revolution by beautiful women such as Desiree Clary. His reluctance and often insubordination became unavoidable fate as he soon realized he had been fired as a general. On the verge of no job, and no money, the question became love or war?
“You to whom nature has given spirit, sweetness, and beauty, you who alone can move and rule my heart, you who know all too well the absolute empire you exercise over it!” -Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte's hand may have been forced by war but it would be love that would revolutionize the future leader of France. A woman named Joséphine de Beauharnais during this time would cause him to break off an engagement with Desiree and subsequently lead him to prove his manhood in a series of battles from Italy to Egypt. Each time Bonaparte used improvised military tactics that were innovative and deceptive. He was an intellectual strategist, one capable of breaking complicated military puzzles thus leading to victory. It was however his heart, and his love for Josephine that proved to be the war he could not win. Though head over heels in love with her, and for all his successes and triumphs, Josephine would lovelessly commit an adulterous affair with Hypolyte Charles in 1796. This was Napoleon's kairotic moment. The moment when it all changed. In a maddening rage, Napoleon so infuriated, and so broken hearted; that he alas, shed of himself of his own humanity and became a machine of destruction. A hero turned villain. Napoleon the revolutionary was now fully realized.
“Power is my mistress." - Napoleon Bonaparte
In the days and years to follow Napoleon conquered far away lands like Malta and Jaffa. Napoleon was said to have “robbed and murdered” its citizens for “three days”4. The vacant face of Napoleon stood in witness of thousands whom were slaughtered to death without the least bit of empathy. A no longer reluctant Napoleon would soon seize a chance while in Egypt to sail back to France and overthrow the government when it attempted to threaten Napoleon with dissertation. A writer turned warlord he drafted a constitution empowering him as the leader of France ending lawlessness and disorder. Napoleon was now France, and the world would be Napoleon's. If it would not love him, he would tear it down and rebuild it in his eyes. A man, now a corrupt God; could only succeed as long as military France was willing. With Europe praying for peace after years of bloodshed; his own military would commit mutiny on April 4, 1814. Faced with his own hubris, Napoleon stepped down as a “personal sacrifice... ...in the interest of France”5
But it was far from over. Napoleon would escape exile and return to confront the army that was sent to intercept him. It has been recorded that he walked up to them. I imagine his arms out like a sacrificial lamb, head bowed and then at the last moment like a crazed mad man he lifts his gaze upon the troops and challenges to them saying "Here I am. Kill your Emperor, if you wish."
For 100 days Napoleon returned to power as the rest of Europe joined together in plans to remove Napoleon once and for all. At the battle of Waterloo in modern day Belgium, a now broken and damaged Napoleon was narrowly defeated by coalition forces comprising of the many of the European countries Napoleon had waged war on. It was his war on these countries that led them to join together and defeat Napoleon. Napoleon was exiled for good, and King Louis XVIII was placed in power.
Many would attempt to forget Napoleon's crimes against humanity and paint him as a romantic hero. While there was the romantic hero Napoleon, there also was the the ruthless and bloody villain Napoleon too. We could argue that there were glimpses of the old Napoleon as he emancipated the Jews, created bodies of law and government under Napoleonic code that parallels our governments today; but, unfortunately in the end it would be Napoleon who would have to be sacrificed himself to save France and the world. The end of Napoleon's rule, much as the death of Dickens's Carton at the guillotine would prove to be the ultimate revolutionizing action of their lives.
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known. “
—Final sentence of A Tale of Two Cities
Though he envisioned a unified Europe, it would be only by the “death” of his reign that we would see the end of the French Revolution, and a more unified Europe. If not for the suffering of his own heart by Joséphine de Beauharnais- France and Europe may not have been transformed by the suffering imposed by Napoleon. A revolution inspired by pain. Pain inflicted by a revolutionary that in the end healed the heart of Europe.
Napoleon's last words were:
“france, armée, tête d'armée, Joséphine.”
No translation is needed. His final mortal word, screaming into the vast, empty, darkness of death was her name: Joséphine.
