Saying Goodbye to Adolescent Optimism

How an afternoon at the museum changed a teen’s outlook on humanity

As the plane accelerated on the runway, preparing for takeoff, tears of excitement streamed down my face. I was 13 years old, sitting beside a random classmate, and this was my first time on an airplane. My eighth grade class was heading to Washington D.C., and I was eagerly anticipating this first flight, seeing our national capitol, touring museums and being away with my friends.

I never quite understood the tears as I did not have a fear of flying. Perhaps, I now wonder with the gift of time, if the tears were somehow foreshadowing of what was to come. This trip would forever alter my outlook on life and on humanity.

The weekend was full of pictures of monuments, meals with our class, late-night talks in hotel rooms and visits to several museums. On our itinerary was a visit to the Holocaust Museum, a topic I had studied in Sunday school and learned about from my parents. I was prepared for the visit to be uncomfortable and tear-provoking as I knew it would depict some of our world’s darkest times.

Innocence, Meet Evil

For the most part, as a recently-turned teenager, I still clung to my youthful optimism and to my belief that man, overall, was good. The experience at the museum, however, was about to destroy my perception that the majority of humans were full of goodness, that there were only a handful of “bad guys” in the world and that evil was limited to a few rare tyrants such as Adolf Hitler.

I still consider myself to be an optimist, even decades after touring the Holocaust Museum and experiencing the death of my innocence. I believe that there are good people in the world; I believe that energy is a powerful thing and that the Universe can often conspire on our behalf; and I believe that good can overpower evil. However, I have never regained that pure naïveté — that feeling that I was surrounded by goodness and by a world full of people who wanted to help, support and love one another.

The exhibits were some of the most powerful ones I had ever seen, and I can still claim that to be the case today at 50 years old. There were times during the narrated exhibition where I remember feeling as if I was right there beside the Jews as they were being carted away to concentration camps. The dark, film-noir style of the exhibits along with the reality of this tragic event in our history had my eyes wide, my heart racing and my body fighting off feelings of nausea.

The Chilling Display That Remains in My Mind

The shoes still get me to this day. Men’s work shoes, women’s heels, children’s sneakers and babies’ delicate shoes were all in a massive heap. I stood there in shocked silence, as thoughts of the human beings that wore those shoes swirled furiously like a hurricane in my mind.

The shoes were still intact, but the lives of those who wore them had been brutally destroyed. A woman carrying her baby as she headed to the store; a man on his way home from a long day at the office; a girl kicking a soccer ball as she talked to a friend. All that remained of those innocent lives were accumulated here in a museum, in a pile on the floor. These stories, these unspoken tales, were palpable as we tourists gazed at the pile of loss.

To my undeveloped, naive, hopeful mind, the evil that was conveyed in that stack of shoes blanketed all other concepts that I could consider. It poured over my innocent belief that man was innately good. It overtook my thought that evil was so rare and only existed in oppressors such as Hitler.

In those hours in the museum, I saw that evil was not actually rare. It had the ability to fester and grow and attach itself to other vulnerable, weak humans who could easily be brainwashed and turned into beings full of hate. Hitler did not take all of those bodies away from their shoes — he had an entire army of supporters. As I looked at the enormity of senseless loss, I felt a shift in me that was inexplicable at the time.

Facing the Reality of Hate

That afternoon left me chilled to my core. It stripped me of my ignorant knowledge about mankind. It showed me that not just one man could be an evil tyrant but that one man could also accumulate thousands and thousands of impassioned followers. Evil did not just exist in some far-away country across oceans where one leader was full of hate but rather evil existed in dutiful soldiers, in homes of locals, and even in many of the hearts of the rest of the world’s inhabitants.

Now, more than 35 years after visiting that museum, I still see hate all around me. Jewish cemeteries in Europe are vandalized with swastikas as Hitler’s message of hate lives on in so many others. Outside of the prevalent hatred toward Jews exists so many other examples of hate, evil and prejudice. Our country suffers from exorbitant racism and our citizens have to fight for their rights over their sexual identities.

The list goes on and on, and that is just here in America — the land of the free. Look around the world at the gruesome atrocities that are being committed every day, and it is disheartening to see the prevalence of evil everywhere.

Yet, there was a time, for about 13 years, when I had the blissful experience of not understanding what I know all too well today. There was that time when I believed that almost all humans were inherently good. That belief died when I entered a museum in 1984, and I still mourn that death to this very day.

Yet, the optimist in me still exists. I still hope and believe that good can prevail … that more people resist evil than choose to dance with it. Maybe if we all remain optimistic and aware, we can tip the scale toward goodness and eventually all return to those naive pre-teen days of hope and bliss.