Denial Pervades All Aspects of Life

Jim and I saw a wonderful film recently at the Jewish Film Festival in Houston, entitled The Flat.

After his German-born grandmother’s death, the filmmaker, his mother and the rest of his family must close her Tel Aviv flat. As the family dredges through grandmother’s belongings, the grandson discovers two five-, no make that ten-thousand-pound elephants in the room.

The first is that his grandparents were very friendly with a high-ranking Nazi and his wife before the war. After the war, perhaps as a gesture of wanting to regain normalcy, his grandparents actively resumed this friendship, and they apparently had no knowledge of the husband’s position in Hitler’s regime.

The grandson also discovers abundant evidence that his maternal great-grandmother was exterminated in a concentration camp. Not only was his mother never told about what happened to her grandmother, but she admitted that she never asked about about her grandmother, either.

The Flat is an award-winning film well worth Netflixing. Click here to see what Wikipedia says about it.

Why am I blogging about this? The family in the film was obviously in denial. Denial seems to be an inherent characteristic of human nature. Is it wise or healthy to live with the type of denial I describe above? No. Is it wise to disregard the facts and not plan responsibly for long-term care? No.

I advise readers to beware of the natural human tendency to avoid talking about the unpleasant aspects of reality. When it comes to avoidance of the harsh reality you might need expensive long-term care one day, this may be especially dangerous; I have seen the consequences too often.