Right If You Think You Are

Pirandello explores the need to be right!

This morning a friend of mine posted a video on his Facebook page entitled "Life is Beautiful." It tells the story of an 82-year-old Frenchwoman, Francine Christoph, who spent time in a German concentration camp as a young girl. Her story, told in French with subtitles, moved me to tears, as I'm sure it did many other viewers. It went like this:

Francine's mother, also held captive, had hidden away some chocolate as a surprise for her daughter when things got too hard to bear. But a woman in their barracks was pregnant, and as she went into labor amid the surrounding horrors of the Holocaust, Francine's mother asked her daughter to forfeit her treat in order to ease the burden of the woman giving birth. Francine readily agreed. The baby was born and six months later the war ended. They all went their separate ways.

Many years passed. Now an old woman, one day Francine attended a lecture on the mental damages wrought by the Holocaust. The psychologist giving the talk approached her afterwards, asked her name, and then handed her a bar of chocolate. "I'm the baby," she explained.

This video being on Facebook, naturally it received scores of comments. More than a few of them were focused on the fact that Francine, in telling the story, had referred to the baby as "he," but it turned out to be a woman. What happened? Were the subtitles wrong? Was the translation incorrect? Was the story even true? The debate raged on.

It caused me to wonder why so many people are so intent on being right at all costs, despite there being greater issues to consider.