A Wil Reidie Self-Help Guide (by way of 4 Finnish Phrases)

Featuring Beckett, Heidegger and other things that make for a very popular newsletter

Have you ever been halfway through a book and found yourself in tears yelling “YES, YES, dear writer, I agree. MY GOD how I agree. Oh how I wish we could be best friends and lovers now,” before the coffee shop turns silent, everyone begins staring at you, and the barista, who’d always been so friendly at tipping time, starts getting all: “we spoke about this last time, Mr Reidie, if it happened again I’d have to ask you to leave”?

Yes, we’ve all been there. The experience of reading something that feels like it could have been written just for you, words from the mind of another that turn a simple book into a kind of sanctuary. A home among pages.

There’s a lot about life in Finland that reminds me I’m very much not in the home that I grew up in. A lack of Marmite, for example. Nobody obsessively discussing the weather.

But there are those occasional moments that, despite their novelty, seem perfectly suited to me. Things like Moomins and tar-flavoured candy that are so entertaining and delicious (respectively, I mean, though no one could deny it looks like Moomins have good meat in the rump).

Thoughts of roasted Moomin aside, today I want to share 4 Finnish phrases that, for various different reasons, make me think this new land may be the home I was always destined for.

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Paskan määrä elämässä on vakio

Translation: The amount of shit in life is constant

If there’s one writer who has remained important to me over any other as I further descend into the mental and physical decrepitude of middle age, it’s Samuel Beckett.

I first discovered him at university during my BA and MA studies when I was young and still wore short trousers and had every dream in the world ahead of me. As I look about myself now, and to the gaudy remains of said dreams at my feet, Sam’s work is still with me.

I’d go as far as to say I define myself as much as a Beckett fan as I do cook or immigrant or manic hypochondriac. And, heavens to Betsy, I’m surely all of those things. If someone quotes Beckett, it’s not unlikely I’ll recognise it. And that’s why this first Finnish phrase I’m sharing always makes me smile.

Finns, like Beckett’s work, have a reputation for being pessimistic, a little bit dark.

In Beckett’s most famous work, the play Waiting for Godot, Vladimir says:

“The tears of the world are a constant quantity.”

The Finnish phrase’s constant shit and Beckett’s constant tears do sound pretty depressing. Surely the goal of society, the meaning of life itself even, is to tilt the balance in favour of happiness over misery, right? I’d think any reasonable person could agree on that.

Beckett’s work concerns something different.

Judging things in terms of what they might eventually achieve, the goal at their end, is a profound ethical decision. Beckett’s work, from the plays Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Krapp’s Last Tape to novels like Molloy and The Unnamable, constantly works to refuse neat identifications of ultimate meaning and intent. The ethical dimension of Beckett’s work lies less in the pursuit of some redemptive moral order and rather in what remains when such redemption is absent: the act of persisting, of carrying on even when no clear meaning or hope can be found.

A consequence of this is not necessarily a state of loss but a kind of bare acknowledgment of life as it is, a recognition of what remains in the face of impossibility or despair. And this unsettles the idea that value is only to be found in the attainment of a final purpose.

I think this thought, if I’m allowed to take a bit of a conceptual leap, finds a real-world equivalent in the oft-reported idea of Finnish “happiness”. Instead of reaching for happiness as a goal or a future state of satisfaction at the “end” of a struggle (more money, more things, bigger achievements), what matters to Finns is what is now. Today. This moment.

The contentment that remains even among the shit and tears.

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Joka kumartaa yhdelle, pyllistää toiselle

Translation: Whoever bows to one, will show their butt to the others

The MA I mentioned was in modern and contemporary literature. And one of my favourite elements of the course was the study of literary theory and philosophy.

I have always remembered one evening class in particular. It was in one of the beautiful listed buildings in Russell Square, Bloomsbury, over the road from where T.S. Eliot worked for Faber. It was wonderful reading the great Modernist classics in that environment. But the evening I have in mind was spent discussing a philosopher called Martin Heidegger.

We usually think of guilt as something you feel after doing something wrong: mixing up your grandmother’s blood pressure pills with TicTacs, for example, or eating your kid’s Easter chocolates and blaming it on one’s recently departed grandmother.

But, for Heidegger, guilt isn’t about morality at all, it’s part of the structure of being human itself.

Every time we make a choice, we’re responsible for a corresponding lack, a loss. By choosing one path, we shut off countless others. Doing my MA meant not becoming a chef much younger. I might be sat here writing this waffle with Michelin stars had I not waited until 29 to start restaurant cooking. The point is, no matter what you do, you’re responsible for extinguishing other possibilities.

To exist is to be guilty, because to live one life is to deny yourself all the others. But in making those choices, you find the opportunity to become truly authentic.

Eventually I did choose to become a chef. That choice eventually brought me back to writing in the form of this newsletter. Whether it’s that choice or moving abroad in 2016 or, having spent two nights imploring her to change her mind by singing My Chemical Romance songs outside her front door, agreeing with dignity to let my university girlfriend dump me, a handful of big choices has defined my life.

When I hear this strange Finnish idiom, the image of showing my arse to one decision by favouring another comes to mind, and I’m back there with Heidegger all over again.

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Joko teet tai itkeet teet

Translation: Either you’ll do it or you’ll cry and do it

I might not have much philosophy to draw on with this one, but it does get to the heart of what I’ve come to learn about Finnish sisu, the stoic trait Finns are said to have that helps them get through tough times.

The word sisu is often translated or considered equivalent to “gutsy” or “tenacity”, but being so culturally important, these terms just don’t seem sufficient.

Whole books could be written, and are, on sisu. I’d imagine every Finn even has their own personal relationship with what it means. But for me, it means focussing on the present, on the task at hand, as difficult as it may be, and finding a way through it step by step.

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Onni ei tule etsien, vaan eläen

Translation: Happiness doesn’t come from searching only from living.

Of all the beautiful ideas and quotes and idioms I’ve learnt in Finland and considered sharing here, this is my very favourite. It sums up so much of what I have learned since I became part of a Finnish family in how to approach personal happiness.

I’ve had periods of terrible anxiety in my life. It’s something I need to work on even now. What I’ve learned is that my anxiety stems from a longing, a searching, for certainty. Normally it’s certainty I’m not going to get sick that I’m most desperate for, though, now I have kids, it naturally transfers to concern for them as well. And by always searching for it, I recognise now that my happiness in the present has often been sacrificed.

No pleasant turn of phrase can change a life alone, but this one at least serves as a reminder for me. Something I can return to. The idea of being certain still feels beautiful to me. It would be a goal, an end state, of true paradise. But I know now that the simple joys of playing with my kids, getting naked with strange old men at the local sauna, and swimming in the last warmth of the summer sun is pretty good as well.

Maybe even better.

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Thanks for reading this week.

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