When my parents found out that I was writing a series of books that take place during the first world war (side project), my father started digging around through the family “vault.” The vault, real or figurative, contains oodles of documents, archives, family trees, heirlooms, photographs and other artifacts that touch on the family’s history over the last five centuries or so. Fascinating stuff. Mysterious stuff. At any rate, he went digging and found a canvas wallet filled with letters which he knew dated back from World War I, which his father (the first Olivier Blanchard) fought in. He believed that the letters had been written by grandpa Olivier during his campaign in the Orient as a cavalry officer, and hoped they would provide me with terrific every-day life material for the books. As you can well imagine, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this stuff.
Earlier this month, taking advantage of a quick trip to Amsterdam, I took a quick detour through France to spend a few days with my parents. I hadn’t been there but ten minutes before my father handed me this treasure-trove of insights which no one had so much as read or touched since 1918.
So here I am, holding in my hands this thick wad of impeccably folded letters and postcards, tucked away in a canvas wallet that – although obviously of a different era, looked as new as if I had just purchased it last week at H&M. The paper was thin and a little yellow, but not from age. Every word looked as crisp and rich as if the ink had just finished drying. I roughly counted the letters: Somewhere between 60 and 80 letters in all, spanning from a period between February to August of 1918. Every letter was dated, numbered, and organized in chronological order. I glimpsed the handwriting, which was decidedly French and very old school, but decipherable all the same. I knew immediately that I had struck gold, not just in terms of raw research for the project, but also in terms of getting a glimpse at the lives of family members I had not ever gotten to know.
It should be said that by the time I was old enough to know about World War I, my grandfather was already very old. Like many survivors of The Great War, he wasn’t much into talking about it – or talking about much of anything – and especially not with an 8-year old. He and his cousins died when I was in my teens, without ever having told me or anyone outside of their own generation the simple stories of their youth. They passed away, one by one, much of their furniture and private things finding their way to various descendants and godchildren scattered all across Europe. Much of it probably ended up in estate sales and antique swaps. What vague historical significance might have still lingered behind them died outright when they became the property of strangers.
This is how family histories die, by the way: Stories don’t get passed down, and so one day the priceless portrait of an ancestor goes from being a family’s oldest historical artifact to being that weird ugly painting of some random person that Uncle Jack always had up on his wall. Estate sales are full of them: Paintings of strangers. Every single one of these strangers hanging on a wall in a gallery or study or just sitting under a sheet in an old garde-meuble is someone’s ancestor, orphaned either by chance or neglect, and destined never to find its way home. Pocket watches, jewelry, hats, books, pens, tea sets, old papers… sold, thrown away, donated. Before you know it, nothing remains but gravestones and dates. Before long, these too are forgotten.
It didn’t occur to me how much of a tragedy this erosion of every family’s history was until years after my grandfather’s generation passed away, when I became a father. Some part of me started to look for a link to the past, to some sense of continuity and legacy I could pass down to my children. It isn’t about just understanding your blood line’s connection with historical events. I think that knowing where you come from, who your ancestors were, helps shape who you will become in your life. We all look for heroes in our ancestors, people with courage and character, people we hope to find a little of ourselves in. Knowing where you come from matters. If it didn’t, sites like ancestry.com wouldn’t be as popular as they are.
But I digress. The letters: I started reading them. A few minutes into the process, I realized that they were not at all what I thought they were. They were not my grandfather’s letters to his family. They were the letters his father Edmond and mother Elise sent to him. They were letters from home. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed at first. I wanted to find out what it was like for a soldier, being shipped to the front, rotating between the relative safety of billets and the terror and carnage of the front lines. It was him I wanted to understand. It was through his eyes that I wanted to see the war. How could letters from his parents, safely tucked away in Paris, ever compete against that? Two letters into it, I realized how wrong I had been. As interesting as it would have been to read his side of the correspondence, discovering theirs was equally fascinating, if not more. Through their letters, I discovered a world that books and movies about the time period rarely shed a light on: How did the French live in 1918? How did parents deal with having a son fighting a war that was clearly the most devastating corpse factory in history? How did Parisians deal with the threat of defeat and occupation, with the privations of war, with the stress of having the Germans close enough to bomb them almost daily? What were their daily lives like?
I now had 6 months worth of letters promising to answer precisely these questions and more. Bonus: As I sifted through them, I soon realized that my great grandmother and great grandfather had entertained separate correspondences with my grandfather. There were two sets of letters bearing the same dates. I would get to experience the same events from two distinct points of view: A man’s and a woman’s. A father’s and a mother’s.
What did I discover? More than I could have hoped for. The price of things, for starters, as my grandfather never failed to bring up the price he paid for every item he sent to my grandfather in his monthly care-packages. The fact that Paris was experiencing terrifying artillery bombardments by day and air raids by night. I know where the bombs and shells fell, on what dates, at what time, what damage they caused and who was killed or injured. I know what the weather was like. I know what the press was telling and not telling the populace. I know who was ill, who was spending a few days in Versailles or Lion sur mer, who was forced out of Amiens because of the mandatory evacuations. I know whose son was killed or injured in such and such battle and on what date. I know who had a cold and who passed a kidney stone. I know the frequency with which people received and wrote letters, or just called them on the telephone. I discovered a million things that paint the clearest portrait of these young, dynamic, fascinating people I only knew as old, tired, white-haired seniors who played bridge with one another and talked of things I didn’t understand. But more to the point of this blog – which is most certainly not about my side projects or my family history – I learned something about the way people communicated with one another in 1918, and my reaction was essentially one of surprise, even shock: Facebook be damned. Even without what we know today as social media, without the benefit of the web and mobile devices, people seemed infinitely more connected to one another in 1918 – and with a war just a horizon away – than we are today with all of our real-time global communications tools. How could this be?
I could go on my parents’ Facebook wall on any given day and not know a fraction of the things people knew about each other’s days back then. I am not talking about people living down the street from one another either. The family was scattered all around France. The Blanchards, the Bassets, the Clogensons, the Guyons and other families which formed the complex web of cousins by blood and marriage were everywhere: Paris, Brest, Lille, Versailles, Amiens, Lyon and dozens of other cities and towns. Not only that but they were often in flux, spending a few days here, a few weeks there, visiting relatives, airing out houses, locking up apartments, taking the baths, getting away. The telephone was still a new invention. What we now know as “snail mail” was the only mature communications technology of the time. Judging by the fading ink every few lines, dipping your pen into an ink well to commit words to paper was still the norm. Letters had to be painstakingly hand-written, in legible handwriting, then taken to the post office. From there, they reached their destinations by foot, car, train, steam ship, bicycle and horseback. Steam ship schedules were widely known so people sending mail overseas were sure not to miss the narrow windows of opportunities during which their mail could be sent abroad. Miss the ship and your letter would take six rather than three weeks to reach the next continent.
Mail, the telegraph and the telephone: Those were your choices. And yet the connectivity between these people, separated by significant distances without the benefit of social and mobile communications, is to me nothing short of amazing. It puts today’s connectivity between us to shame. I’m not kidding. We’re amateurs compared to these folks who could have never even imagined a thing like Twitter, let alone the internet. They knew everything about one another: where they were, who they were with, what they talked about, what the weather was like there, what they ate and drank, what they were wearing… every last detail. Not with just five or six people in their immediate circles but dozens.
As entertaining as it is to read about gothas blowing up Captain Machin-chose’s pied-à-terre on the Rue de Rivoli and my great-uncle Maurice’s daily dance with whooping cough in March of 1918, seeing how efficient the information network between relatives and social circles was, in spite of the obvious absence of technology, is one of the most fascinating aspects of this discovery process.
My conclusion: We have forgotten more about the nature of social connectivity in the last 96 years than we have learned from every blog post written about Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube, blogs, Tumblr, Quora and Pinterest combined (yes, including Mashable). Those of you who still think that all of this is about followers and fans, about platforms, about messaging and content, good luck with that. You’re fishing in the wrong pond with the wrong lure. There is something infinitely more human, simple and honest about what makes this connectivity work, about what feeds it (and how to ultimately tap it properly) than the channels, the technologies, the tools and even the vaunted strategies everyone and their brother is trying to sell you.
Don’t look to engagement and conversations to give meaning to any of it. Don’t look to content either. These things matter, sure, but they are not the core, the pivot, the heart of what makes this all work. There is something else, and until you have figured out what it is, your social media and social business “strategies,” no matter how much money and science you throw at them, will never work the way you want them to.
So take a giant step back. Stop listening to the incessant social media echo chamber for a few days. You owe it to yourself (and perhaps your clients) to get your eye back on the ball when it comes to this. You have been led astray a million times, one millionth of a degree at a time. While you thought you were still on the right track, you were already off course. “Content is king,” engagement strategy, Return on Influence, they are little more than gloss on broken compasses, buzzwords whose meaning, if they ever held any, have now eroded into parodies of legitimate insight. As for the self-important messengers of this so-called social media “thought leadership” movement, these hot air selling imbeciles peddling their pathetic blend of make-believe authenticity and “engagement strategy” day after day after day, blog post after tweet after webinar, all I see there now is the final act in a opera of uninspired parroting whose every note brings them closer to its inexorable denouement. We know where this is headed. We all know it. And not even their Klout scores will save them when the house lights come back on.
Something became painfully clear to me while I was reading these letters and saw the timeless nature of human connectivity so clearly manifested in them. I won’t tell you what it is. It wouldn’t do any good. You have to go look for it yourselves, in your own way, or you will never completely get it. But what I can tell you is this: Until then, learn to tell the difference between self-serving nitwits who have merely memorized the choreography and lyrics of the daily social media sales pitch, and people who understand how all the pieces actually fit. Stop spending time with the former and start filling your ranks with the latter. It will start to pay off right away.
None of this is trivial.
Cheers,
Olivier
* * *
CEO-Read – Amazon.com – www.smroi.net – Barnes & Noble – Que
Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
Uh uh! [TURNS FLASHLIGHT ON]… So all that time spent on @Klout?… a mere Tap Dance? Mon Dieu!…
Alas.
… Levity aside, thanks for such a meaty shish kabob that skewers the newness angle on what we have been merely doing for centuries, that age old task of educating ourselves through sharing and commenting; started reblog Thursdays here, and well, must admit, as ancestrally primeval as this may sound, need to come back over the weekend on the old tethered laptop to dissect the timelessness of this piece
Merci Tres Beaucoup, as always!
De rien. 🙂
Reblogged this on @FJPalacio > 160 Chars! and commented:
#ReblogThursdays, Shish Kabob sans @Klout Sauce, c’est Magnifique!
Given that I served in the military (although I did not serve in combat) I remember how when I was stationed in Central America and during training the only method we had of communications that was consistent was a good letter.
I remember how I use to keep paper handy so every opportunity I got I could express myself and let my family know how my day had gone by. The frustrations of training (especially during boot camp at 17 years of age).
I have to say that is something that something is lost when communicating online people have a lot of small talk. The feeds are moving so fast that you can only truly get to know a few people at a time.
I have to say that the time those individuals took to communicate was well appreciated. I guess like everything when you have very few ways of getting to do something then you give it more importance.
I see how it is so easy to call someone anytime that you never do it. The same goes for sending a tweet or FB message.
Sometimes I am amazed of when I see someone on my feed that I would like to connect with more often and see how time flies that I did not take the time to say hi or find out what is happening in our lives.
On preserving our history I think many of us need to do the best job possible. I have ancestors from France that came over in the late 1800’s.
I always wonder what it would have been if my previous ancestors and family members would have kept a way to record more of our connections.
Like you said over time many things get forgotten so it is more about focusing on the quality of people you connect with and making sure to make time for them.
Yep. So the question for businesses is this: How do you shift some of your communications into this kind of mode? How do social channels (and more importantly social networks and circles) hold the key to creating and maintaining deeper connections with people who will ultimately become not only your loyal customers but your… “brand relatives” of sorts? It’s a question that needs to be asked, internally, every hour of every day.
I think we will both agree on the fact that 99% go directly into what am I getting vs what the client is getting out of the conversation.
Reason why sometimes social channels are not that social to begin with they are more income driven.
Those that continue to ask them themselves those questions is because they truly understand all the parts and to a certain extent its in their nature.
Hey Raul,
I only would charge you $1/minute to talk to me more 🙂
I am so happy I know you. This might be…well, I’m pretty certain it’s my most favorite blog post ever.
Two issues come to mind.
First, ancestral homelessness is I think a big and not much spoken of problem. Five of my 8 great-grandparents were not born in the US. One was from Switzerland, two were from Odessa, and two were from Berditchev. We really don’t know why any of them came here, although one could guess that the ancestors from Russia came because of the pogroms. But we don’t know what they experienced or how much the religious intolerance really affected them. Another of my great-grandparents was part Cherokee, but we have no idea who the Cherokee was. Did they stay in Tennessee or did they have to go to Oklahoma? No idea. I’m sure the same is true for a lot of people. Family trees are more like family shrubs. How does this affect people? I would love to know if I still have relatives in Ireland or Switzerland or Russia. How would that impact my outlook on life? Phew. No idea again.
As for the connections, I couldn’t agree more. I always thought that after I graduated from high school and college my friends and I would get together and have those great catch-up conversations. Now, even meeting someone offline for the first time, you just pick up a strand of conversation that started online. There’s no, “So uh…what’s up with you” segue. I think there’s probably an underlying assumption that what you share online is as far as you go. Therefore, we only brush the surface. I wonder how much is missed. I barely know where most of my online friends work. I don’t know if a lot of the people I talk to are married or have kids. How many siblings do they have? No frackin clue.
How is all of that impacting people? No idea again and again.
But I’m pretty sure these things are all pretty sad when you get right down to it.
Yeah. Great points. I see it a lot when I am in the US: Because just about everyone West of Europe and East of Japan is essentially either the product of immigration or slavery, there is a good reason for the disconnect. The old-timers who came here of their own free will still spoke Russian, Italian, German, Polish, Portuguese, French, Spanish, etc. knew what towns they came from. They remembered their aunts and uncles, their cousins back home… all of that. But because they couldn’t bring giant crates of gear to America with them, most of it got left behind. Revolutions, the Great Depression, two world wars, the Soviet regime and… time took care of the rest. If they never really managed to learn English (as was the case with many of them), their connection with their grandchildren became limited. Much of what they knew and remembered died with them.
I look at the difference, for instance, between what we know of the French branches of my family, and the records are excellent because they didn’t move around all that much. But the Polish side that ran to France when the Nazis invaded? It’s almost all gone. They took only what they could carry. I assume whatever valuables they had were used to pay for their travels, lodging and food, so if they owned rings, pocket watches or anything of value, it was sold. The rest was stolen or destroyed. Had the Russian branch not been part of the Imperial house, we probably wouldn’t be able to go back very far either. They ran with whatever they could carry. The rest was left behind. I assume the Red Army just burned whatever couldn’t be melted down into coins, rifle barrels or bullets, and that was that. We were just lucky that they weren’t blacksmiths or we would have known very little about where they came from and who begat whom. 😉
It’s why I like Facebook’s Timeline feature so much, and why I took to it so willingly. It puts people’s lives in context. It creates continuity. Aside from the story-telling aspect of it, it allows people today to create the kinds of records that I wish my great, great grandparents had been able to keep. There’s tremendous value to that… unless Quetzacoatl comes back this December and fights Chtulu for the right to eat the Earth, Godzilla, Thor and all.
But that’s just personal interest stuff. There is also a business-relevant dimension to this that holds the key to the entire social media “thing” actually fulfilling its promise to both brands and the consumers who ultimately decide their fates. And the superficial crap that has become the focus of so much “expert content” is increasingly missing the point.
Yep yep and more yep.
By the way, we have a picture of one of our Russian relatives. Looks like she was in her 90s, not a tooth in her head, babooshka on her head, hands folded solemnly. No idea who she is. Breaks my heart.
Marjorie, these are very good points. We do just scratch the surface, and the same thoughts run through my mind about connecting with people, without it really happening. This is very thought-provoking. Hmm …
Nice read, thanks for sharing!
Looking back now, I sometimes regret not having sat down with my grandparents to talk about their lives when they were young. Back then, I wasn’t really interested (I’d rather spent my time playing videogames or with friends outside). Guess it’s true that you never really know what you miss until it’s gone.
Anyways, you’ve aroused my curiosity for your new book even more. Hope these letters will be reflected more in it than the pirates, vikings or aliens you’ve mentioned during dinner before 😉
Yeah, I wish I could go back too. All of those holidays spent with my grandparents… I was little. I was bored. I wish I had been unnaturally mature for my age, put away my toys for a few hours each day, and forced them to tell me everything about their youth.
Vikings vs. Ninjas. 😀
Olivier,
Great post. How lucky you are to have those letters. Lately I have been on a quest to figure out my family tree a little better, and it is amazing what you can find. Figuring out who my ancestors are and where exactly they came from has been very revealing for me, and I am not close to finding out everything. In my family, it was very important to be American once you lived here, and although we still have some of our family traditions, I’m sure there is much that was lost through my great-grandparents efforts to assimilate to this culture. Knowing my ancestors allows me to know myself better. For me, here’s one thing about social media that is a detractor- because our communications are often with people we don’t know, I find there is a tendency to attack people you don’t agree with much more readily than you would if you were talking to them face or face, or if you had to take the time to write it in a letter. Writing letters forced people to think about what they were saying more. I miss those days.
I don’t know… My great gramps had his little feuds too. He talked about them in his letters. So-and-so was a crook. So-and-so was a lying prick. Not much has changed, really. 😀
But yeah. It is indeed easier for people to hide behind online personas (even fake, anonymous accounts) and attack people they don’t like than it used to be back in the day. I can’t think of too many instances of trolling in 1918 media. 😉
Olivier, thank you for writing this post. Truly. Both my parents are Polish immigrants – and as such, I’m first-generation American. My mother’s parents have been gone for more than a decade now, but I still remember fondly visiting as a child for the entire summer. At the time, travel and visa costs were terribly expensive, so we’d make the most of our trip and stay for the entire summer, leaving the day that school let out and returning just days before the next term started. My Dziadzia was a butcher until the day that he died – and I had uncles involved in the underground during both World Wars.
That’s very cool. Make sure you write all this stuff down and keep it in a safe place. Even the most insignificant details. The color of the walls in the butcher shop. The kind of soap that always sat on the edge of the sink. What they wore, what the weather was like, where you played. That’s the meat of it. Names, places, dates, they hold it all together, but the little insignificant details are what will paint the picture for future generations. 🙂
Wow Olivier, incredibly strong message to be heard here. You’re right, we’re all so “connected” but the depth of most these connections is more shallow than the 140 characters they were created on..
Yep. Though shallow is okay. We can’t all be best buds all the time. Having said that, what makes every connective layer stick won’t be found in “content strategy” and platform optimization. So… what are brands doing about that? 😉
Well, ummmm, yeah…. Haven’t seen too much about that 😀 I suppose that’s what makes you a brand’s best secret weapon.
I also was going to say everything that Margie did, but I didn’t want to steal her thunder (great comment Margie)
Go on ahead with joe bad self, Tony. Although if you were going to say everything I said I think we might be related 🙂
Amazing post, Olivier. This is why I have so much respect for you. You have an innate ability to reveal the core and pull others in. Also, your writing style on this is incredible.
Thank you! 🙂 I baked a few decent sentences there towards the end. Sometimes, you get lucky like that.
I am the current guardian of the meticulous journals, scrapbooks, reels of film, stacks of letters tied up in ribbon, photographs, passports, immigration papers, etc, kept by my great grandmother. Over the years, I don’t feel like I’ve “read” the letters as much as it feels like I’ve “spent time with” these letters. (I realize that sounds ridiculous, I can’t fully articulate the feeling. I apologize.) It has been such an incredible gift, one I diligently preserve, and to which I add new correspondence, photographs and digital memories on disk and jump drives. Through these, I’ve had the opportunity to better understand the social dynamics and relationships of my family, their communities, and my heritage. There have been so many incredible stories, too many to count. I’m grateful for these stories, this connection, and I am so happy to be able to pass it along.
After all these years of being the “guardian” of these items, one of the best moments came recently. My father found a long lost piece of luggage that belonged to my grandfather. It contained several very old reels of film. I paid to have the images transferred to digital format and decided to try to restore the picture quality a bit. The first grainy frames of this 1920’s silent reel were of a face I’d only seen in still photographs, never smiling, always reserved, proper. It was my great-great grandfather. He turned to the camera and smiled. I recognized my youngest daughter in an instant. That was HER smile. (I thought, How could I not have seen that before?!) The resemblance was stunning. And the mannerisms(!) the way he moved his hands, raised his eyebrows, his lips… it was breathtaking.
My great-great grandfather only had one daughter. He named her Eleanor, or his “Little Nora”, who passed when I was a young girl, but would become the namesake for MY own little Nora. All of this hit me in one incredible moment. Such a strong connection that would have gone unnoticed forever more, had I not had the opportunity to experience these precious artifacts of my forebears’ lives and times. *sigh*
I love the photos and memories that you share here and on FB. Thanks for letting me wander down this path for a minute, self-indulgent as this comment may be…heh. 😉
All the best to you and yours, Olivier.
-Sara
Wow! That is incredible. Movie reels from back then? You’re very lucky.
Oh, and I completely understand what you mean about “spending time” with the letters. 🙂
Thanks for taking the time to share that.
My pleasure. I had the good fortune to be the great-great granddaughter of an amateur film nut (early adopters run in the family–ha!). My father followed suit. Because of that, I have an incredible collection of cameras and projectors. Although I have transferred all of the footage to digital formats, I still have the old 35mm, 16mm, and regular 8 reels. On occasion, I fire them up and watch them. Now and then a reel snaps, and the bulbs malfunction, or things snap and pop, but it’s very cool. BTW, I’m speaking at SXSW this year as well, I really hope to run into you in Austin. I’ll be on the lookout for an impeccably dressed Frenchman. 😉
🙂 I’ll shine my shoes.
I love this Olivier, what an amazing gift to have all of those items. My maternal grandmother would recount so many things to me when I was a child, but we will likely never know much about her parents. Her father fought in the War with Bulgaria, but he was Macedonian. What happened to his family when they settled in Indiana was tragic. It was the inspiration for my first blog post bit.ly/gmah. My grandfathers family stayed in the same area for more than 100 years, but as far as I know, there were no letters. It’s the same for my paternal grandparents.
When I traveled to France with Didier, they had treasures from strangers…letters from 1872 found in an old safe along with stock certificates and a very old checkbook. It gave me chills to look at those things. As an American, I don’t have a great deal of exposure to truly old things…so I was in awe as a held a hatchet in my hand that had been dated to 900 B.C. Incredible. Thanks for sharing your story, it caused me to think about the treasures I have come across. It also prompts me (and I hope others) not to forget about the treasures we have today – if you have family, reach out, ask questions and learn about the history of your family before it’s too late.
That computer mouse could be worth something in 300 years. 😉
beautiful Olivier. beautiful. *chapeau*
There is no B2B and B2C without the heart. People need to focus on the P2P (person to person, people to people) and grow the love. Love is the fuel for this fire.
In my homeland of Tonga in the South Pacific we have a creed that we live by: ‘Ko Tonga Mo’unga Ki He Loto’ literally translated means ‘The Mountain of Tonga is within you’. This is an entrenched cultural value. As a people, we are taught this value to always lead with your heart unconditionally where-ever we are and with whoever we meet.
I spoke at a digital conference 2 days ago here in Sydney and the meat and potatoes of this post fully reflects what was shared. There was very little jargon dropping, simply a couple family pics and people who I grew up with, my story, my ‘roots’, my journey, and a few lessons/wisdoms from the ‘scars’ of life.
You could’ve heard a pin drop. Many had that puzzled look and at the time, I actually thought I was experiencing ‘digital crickets’ offline. I couldn’t resist but play the sound of crickets for the audience so they (hopefully) understood why any sentiment is a beautiful thing and where they don’t want to be. Negativity is the best sentiment of all when embraced and handled effectively. “Digital crickets land”, not so much. Just show the unconditional love.
There were a couple of sceptics who shared with me that it wasn’t the type of presentation that they were expecting and asked what kind of ‘results’ have eventuated from ‘showing the love’. My simple reply, an invitation from Google (Australia) to share our story within the next couple of weeks.
PS: I hope you dont mind, I showcased your book http://www.amazon.com/Social-Media-ROI-Organization-ebook/dp/B004P8J1MQ as a great start for those looking for a robust compass to help them on their way.
Merci très beaucoup.
One of my goals that I have had to shelve during this economic crunch is to return to Vimy one day with my dad. Not sure why, but reading this reaffirmed how important that trip will be.
The Ypres salient is… a unique place. I want to go back next year.
Thanks for this moving and heart felt piece. It’s fascinating the lessons that the past can teach us and the wisdom proffered by days gone. Good luck with your book! x
Michelle, http://www.theyeariquitmylife.com
Olivier, great post for sure. “Back in the day” when social circles were smaller and there was less information coming at you I would say it was easier to “truly know people” and be intimately connected. That is entirely possible today too but it takes that choice by the individual to step back from the abyss of overload and endless info flying through space in order to re-engage with people…smaller circles and a more intimate dialogue.
Great job as usual Olivier, cheers man.
I am an immigrant from Ireland, Belfast. I sense what you say and feel the connection that you have with the past and family.
I have all of that, but living so many years in America it is slipping away. However, I hold onto what I have got and pass it along to my family. I use the old ways, sayings, how to’s and such. My family think of me as outside the circle, but also interesting.
Recently I lost a whole load of photo’s going back 60 years, I am devastated, but my brother has a load from the same period, lucky eh!
Thanks for your post. Sweet comfort indeed.
I think that all this tech’ needs a sweep away. Most is for the money, bringing out the newest way to waste the day for the chattering classes.
But business and communication… well I think that getting the details of a life lived and being lived, the views of why and how towards customers matter more that all of the noise from the frogs at the edge of the pond.
Thankyou!
Billy
The speed with which we pursue the next distraction is astonishing. I could not agree more how busy we are not communicating and connecting.
My best friend left 10 days ago to Afghanistan. It’s tough on him, his 4 kids and his wife. We just spent a lot of time with them. Talked, hugged, said it’s OK to cry and OK to have fun. We created a hidden FB Group and we Skype. No letters because of no need. But it’s not about that. It’s about giving a shit, not giving and expecting but the sheer desire to care and share, also what is painful and hard. It’s about willing to leave the BS comfort zone and sacrifice a part of the ‘I’ for the ‘us’. It’s about saying ‘screw it’ to the ‘egosystem’, the social new speak for the age of narcissism. It’s about daring to be a piece of a puzzle instead of the puzzle. It’s about resisting logic and following emotion
And most of all it is by not wanting to own everything but daring to really connect out of the desire to WANT to ‘talk’ and share. Some call it love, some community and others relationships, all very devaluated terms.
“It’s about giving a shit, not giving and expecting but the sheer desire to care and share, also what is painful and hard. It’s about willing to leave the BS comfort zone and sacrifice a part of the ‘I’ for the ‘us’. It’s about saying ‘screw it’ to the ‘egosystem’, the social new speak for the age of narcissism. It’s about daring to be a piece of a puzzle instead of the puzzle. It’s about resisting logic and following emotion. And most of all it is by not wanting to own everything but daring to really connect out of the desire to WANT to ‘talk’ and share. Some call it love, some community and others relationships, all very devaluated terms.” Bullseye. Thank you for that.
As always welcome 😉
Brilliant. We engage for the purpose of building shallow connections. And that’s all wrong. One of the reasons why I insist on meeting with my clients, in their business, while they are working with clients, and I walk them through to observe what is going on in the brick and mortar. It is so much more than mere “engagement” or conversation. And they need to learn how to translate that.
Also, several months ago we were dragging out boxes from my mother’s attic to go through stuff. In it we found a tiny journal where my grandfather kept a list of everything they gave (and the cost) for birthday’s and Christmas. As well as a ledger of all they spent, including receipts for roofing on their home way back in the 50s. I even saw the listing for the Teddy Bear they gave me on my first Christmas back in 1962 (and which I still have) and it only cost about $2. He itemized everything, and it gave me an incredible window into the lives of my grandparents.
Some people would throw that away, but I decided to keep it. Fascinating stuff.
Kudos on #1. Thumbs-up on #2. That ledger find is pretty awesome.
Absolutely fantastic post, Olivier! So poignant. It is such a shame that we don’t go to the depth they did then with the tools we have today. I LOVE social media and TRY to use it as you describe it should be used. Other people just aren’t always as interested in delving deeper unfortunately.
Your comment is so applicable about business as well:
“How do social channels (and more importantly social networks and circles) hold the key to creating and maintaining deeper connections with people who will ultimately become not only your loyal customers but your… “brand relatives” of sorts? It’s a question that needs to be asked, internally, every hour of every day.”
Too often, people are thinking, “What’s in it for me?” Rather than how can we share this experience (whatever it may be), together.
Great post!!
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Thank you. Yes… I keep hearing about content. Everyone wants to focus on content and channels and engagement. It’s ludicrous. Five years ago, companies were in the business of selling products. Now, their digital arms are in the business of selling content then hopefully selling products? All they’ve done is added a new product layer (and associated costs of production and distribution). That’s going backwards.
Selling content isn’t engagement. It’s selling content. Engagement is giving a shit and helping make someone’s day a little bit better. 😉
Oliver, I never knew you existed until now and with one post you’ve validated a path I’m taking on which I’m just taking my first step.
The personal communication embodied in those letters were highly purposeful… it was transmission of thought. Better yet, it was connecting the reader to a moment of reflection that benefited the writer and the reader and their larger social group.
We’ve been taken in by the 18 second sound bite and whiplash of spitting out 140 character headlines. On the flip side, after your post, even the word “sharing” seems trite. It’s power of dialogue that creates truer and more concrete connections.
Indeed. Very good points that actually weren’t 100% clear in my mind until you brought them up. Thanks for that. 🙂
200% agree. The shallowness of the social persona, 140 character message and addiction to the fake social relationship that destroys the value of real relationships. The false sense of security when investing in online connections with the ‘on’ and ‘off’ button instead of the time, investment and emotion it requires to actually talk.
Isn’t it amazing what can be learned from what some may consider worthless pieces of paper. I’m fascinated by the “scraps” I find at local junk stores and always wonder about the stories behind them. Imagine what would have been lost if the papers in your story were discarded.
Thanks for a great read.
People throw away the damnedest things. 😀
As always, thought provoking, well written and compelling! Thank you for sharing, certainly you were making a point, but your ability to weave a delicate Frame Story, make your point and captivate your audience is nothing sort of BRILLIANT!
Hi Olivier, you have shared such a wonderful feeling with us I have just read two paragraph of your post for now and will come back to your post to read your whole article..As it is big in size but I really want to go through it fully!!