give me strength

I love my dad.

My dad is the greatest; he’s funny and lovable and sweet and kind.

But over the years I have managed to pick up one or two of his less charming qualities.

The main one that my mum has pointed out over the last week is the unreal expectations that I have of people. People in general – I mean – as a collective. So when inevitably they fall short of my expectations I feel angry and disillusioned.

We were in Paris in the weekend just past. Mum and I jumped on the Eurostar in London Waterloo and two and a half hours later we were in Gard de Nord in Paris. Honestly, fast trains are the only way to travel. I wonder what would be involved in a monorail from London to Melbourne… hmmm, I feel a business proposition coming on.

Paris at any time of the year is lovely and I’m believe I can say that legitimately considering this is the third time I’ve been there. It’s always great seeing these cities through new eyes for the first time and my mother was so excited, so amazed and really game. She let me lead her through the streets with a map (and those of you who know me well will know that this is a dangerous feat in itself) and not much idea about what we actually wanted to do.

Saturday was the best day. The sun was shining, it was warm and we spent most of the day wandering through the city, seeing the sights and Mum sighing after my tenth exclamation of “I’m hungry, can we get something to eat.” Mum claims that traveling with me now is worse than travelling with me when I was a child because I seem to eat more now and am constantly hungry.

But the weather on Sunday was pretty rubbish and I managed to convince Mum that going to the Louvre would be a great way to spend the morning.

Which it was, except for the people. People in groups bug me, school groups give both my mother and I the shivers and unnecessary flash photography in museums makes me want run, screaming madly at the offenders, grab their cameras and smash them into a million tiny camera pieces.

No, I don’t have anger management issues, why do you ask?

Because what gets to me the most is the disrespectful behaviour of these people. In the Louvre there are signs all around the painting asking that viewers refrain from taking photos. And we all know why don’t we? The flashes from millions of cameras over the years will dull and ruin these masterpieces. And yet as Mum and I walked into the room where the Mona Lisa hangs I felt like I was about to walk down the red carpet of the next Dan Brown book. Camera click sounds echoed across the walls, the hundreds of flashes blinded me and made me stumble into a small child who turned looked at me and then took a photograph of The Wedding Feast at Cana.

Grrrr, it makes me mad. And I was quite vocal about exactly how mad this made me. There are signs, we know why we shouldn’t do it and yet people think that they’re pulling one over the Man just by defying the rules and taking the photo anyway. What do they think that they’re proving? They are just destroying priceless works of art for future generations by being so innately selfish.

My mum managed to lead me away from the room without too much of a scene, all the while nodding sympathetically at my tirade about the lack of respect of people. My mother is more often than not the picture-perfect image of calm. She’s patient and very rarely lets her emotions lead her away from the facts of an argument. Which is probably why the rest of us in the family end up feeling as though we have lost every argument we’ve ever had with her.

Unfortunately I have inherited my lack of patience and my often emotionally-driven argumentative nature, plus a tendency to over-react from my lovely father.

Of course my mood didn’t improve when we arrived in Notre Dame and while people were praying and waiting for 6 o’clock mass to begin, other people were walking through the cathedral talking very loudly and taking (yes, you guessed it) more flash photography.

I don’t know, perhaps there is some truth in my mum’s observation. Perhaps I do need to make an effort to not hold people up on a behaviour pedestal. I definitely know that we, I, are not perfect and I know that there’s so many awful things happening every minute across the world.

But surely the things we can change and the things that we can aim towards are small, but positive steps towards creating the kind of place that I want to live in and leave for future generations. I want our generation to be remembered as the people who pushed stongly for equality, for peace and for understanding and not for ruining priceless artwork.

While not taking photos of paintings seems to be such a small thing on the grand scale, it’s – for me – one step closer to recognising that each of us can make a difference.

And that’s something that I believe!