In the US, many of us were educated as children with the mantra of "We're Number One." But when you learn more about other countries, you see that they are often superior in various ways...It's time we start to better appreciate this. If you've traveled or lived outside the US, the Free Press invites you to contribute to this continuing feature of the paper.

France, the Cure for Puritanism

by Rebecca Mizhir

If Paris were a body, my experience of life in Port Townsend, Washington would take up its littlest finger, and all my previous life experience would fit into the space of the cranium, as I now realize that almost all of my previous life experience has taken place almost entirely in the brain. In Paris, my back, my legs, my hungry fingers begin to awake. Even my sex sends me a letter that it exists, and at this the holy angels of France rejoiced that their work was complete.

Once you are in France, you can only eat as the French eat, think as the French think, live as the French live. After a few days of two-and-a-half hour lunches where the wine runs like water and the conversation dances between ideas and love and humor followed by a regular afternoon nap and then a longer, looser version of the whole thing beginning again around 8pm, you begin to shake your withers free of what you realize can only be correctly defined as Puritanism.

You see how your entire country was founded by a sect of religious fundamentalists--the Puritans--whose repressive tendencies were worsened by bad luck and bad weather in the form of a string of cold winters that have chilled modern North American morals toward a fear of sexuality, a rigid notion of good and evil with no room for paradox, and an inability to take pleasure in the heart, the body, or the present. You see how these mental foundations affect the US and its culture to this day, continuing to repress us sexually, stupefy us philosophically and straight-jacket us morally. With this fresh perspective on the frosty legacy of shame and self-discipline you can trace directly back to your Plymouth Rock ancestry, you finally admit to yourself that, contrary to Puritan beliefs, it is okay, perhaps even preferable, to enjoy life, to move slowly, to succumb to the freedom you feel rising up beneath your liberated and bronzing skin.

And then you begin to see the differences. Let's start with food. Food in the US has become so politicized, especially due to the nature of its manufacture, that it's almost politically incorrect to eat certain types of foods, like meat or milk. But such foods are part of human history. While in France I began to acknowledge again how good it felt to eat meat and dairy without the sense that--if the animals weren't raised or killed inhumanely--I was somehow doing something "wrong." I participated in a "slaughter," helping to kill, pluck and gut the fowl we ate.

Paradoxically, although I was overwhelmed, frightened and disturbed during the killing, I gained a larger sense of connection to Nature and her cycles of life and death, making me less sentimental about them and at the same time less intimidated by them.

I believe it was important to be present to the whole cycle of food production, and this presence nourished me physically and spiritually. Also, I could acknowledge how wonderfully these animals had been raised and watch the whole process unfold--from eggs hatching to babies running around the farm to the adults happily mucking about in the pond till death and then onto the dinner table, often with the head still attached--implying there was no shame in eating what Nature provides, as long as it is done with respect and kindness.

After existing in the more moderately-minded world of France, I noticed that we go a bit overboard with our diets here, either subsisting on sugary snacks or going in the opposite direction and eating 100 percent vegan, raw, whole, something or other, without acknowledging the full range of pleasures and tastes and food groups our bodies need. Again we fall prey to a Puritan attitude of all or nothing, one way is right and all others are wrong, instead of defaulting to the joys of the body, the pleasure of savoring food, languorously and in community, the richness of appetites and foods available to us: aperitifs and vegetables and sauces and meats and breads and wines and cheeses and fruits and desserts and liqueurs and on and on.

While I was in France, almost every lunch and dinner we ate was a two-to-four hour affair and it included all these types of foods, as well as neighbors and conversation and a general sense that it is important to eat together and be connected to other humans throughout the day. I never felt hungry in France because all my appetites were met at a meal--social, sensual and physical--and I also never felt the body image issues I feel back in the US, because bodies were there to be enjoyed, not owned or shown off for someone else's pleasure.

And, in France, the flower gardens are mixed with vegetable gardens. Gardens there aren't only about showiness and color, but also about form and embodying ideas. At chateaux gardens everywhere I saw kale and corn mixed in with more showy flowers, adding the idea that what a plant suggests (sturdiness, abundance) and all its parts (leaves, stem) are as attractive as a big fat in-your-face flower.

And the lines were not so hard and fast there, as in between clean and dirty, indoor and outdoor, official and unofficial: the dinner table sits in the garden, the chickens wander in and out of the house, meat dishes sit out all day (and no one gets sick because they've developed strong stomachs), the organic farmer wears Nike shoes and hates his Parisian neighbor openly, and everyone waves their political opinions about in the air like obnoxious cigarettes (yes, I do admit they smoke too much), not to be right about anything, but just to hash closer to some form of common and discussible truth. And I won't even get started on their healthier attitudes toward sex and sexuality.

In terms of the French work ethic, they have moved far ahead of us. The legal work week is 35 hours, and honestly, I didn't see anyone "working" very hard. It wasn't like here, where you go to work and basically shut down major parts of yourself and bust your butt until you can go home again and collapse, again allowing Puritanism to make us unconscious. In France, it's more like you show up to work in the same state you always are in (the present). You're present all day, to each other, to your inner opinions about your work, and to what you as a human being need, your thirst and hunger and laziness, in a way that accepts these pangs as human, and generously allows for them. Maybe not a ton of work got done, but everyone's needs were met--we ate, the animals ate, the vegetables grew, everyone was clothed and sheltered, and, of utmost importance, we all felt connected, which is perhaps a human's greatest need, which the French acknowledge. And they have not allowed that need to get trumped by some indefinable chase after "doing things" or "getting things" or "looking good" (And the sad thing is, they look so much better than we do--thinner, healthier and downright sexier and better dressed!)

Also, adding to their ability to enjoy what's truly enjoyable in life, all their health care and education are paid for, their social systems don't allow for people to "fall through the cracks," and they take annual vacations of anywhere from six to eight weeks. When I told a French friend that in the US the average annual vacation is one to two weeks, he looked at me as if I had told him we shoot people in the streets for sport. He couldn't comprehend not having more of a break, and he said, "You can't even begin to do anything in two weeks." A silence followed, murmuring about how sad it was that the entire country of the US never gets the opportunity to truly relax.

Lastly, I found their attitude toward and expectations of government to be more mature than ours, and traced this maturity's origins back to the French Revolution. I saw that France is a country that has pulled down its own government. Even though, in the US, we say we have had a revolution, it was a revolution against an external oppressor, the British, whereas in France they actually sacked their own ruling class. And by that I mean that they dragged all the aristocracy and royalty out of office and literally killed them in the streets. Several times over about a 50 year period. After something like that happens in a country, people don't see the lines between those in power and those not "in power" to be overly concrete. In fact, the general public seems to know that if the government doesn't respond to what they want, then the public has the power to do something about it. Today the French use strikes, striking often for what the population wants and expecting those in power to listen.

Since I myself am now guilty of being "black and white," by making the French culture "good" and the US culture "bad," I'll end with an image to try and amend the situation. At the second farm I stayed at, on the rare occasions when we would drive to town, we'd drive slowly out of the hamlet, stopping and honking at each neighboring house to chat and gossip and ask if they needed anything. After the last house, we would arrive at the field of Mousse-Bleu, an embarrassingly long eared, doe-eyed, sad donkey, who was perhaps the spiritual guru of the hamlet. When the donkey got lonely, she'd cry and cry as if someone had just died, a cry that reached all the hamlet dwellers and moved them to stillness and reflection, creating a secret and great reverence for Mousse-Bleu. We would stop the car and wave quietly to Mousse-Bleu, and we would sit for a while, with the donkey honking, sitting with her as if we had decided we finally had the right to stop and feel, to be connected to what--within all of us--is home.

The above article was originally published in Vigilance magazine, based in Port Townsend. See www.olympicvigilance.org.

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