Comfort Eating in an Emergency

or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being a Pound Shop Eckhart Tolle

Aimo’s main concern the day Russia invaded Finland (and in doing so begin 1939’s “Winter War” during which the Red Army would see itself humbled by defending forces who, though fewer in number and lesser-equipped, would prove better suited to the snow and freezing temperatures to the point it would be nothing but shear might and resources that eventually won out to force Finland to accept the terms of the Moscow Treaty that saw young Aimo’s home region of Karelia annexed to the aggressor) was his mother’s favourite blanket that he’d recently ripped an enormous, Aimo-shaped hole in.

His friends, you see, had used it to soften Aimo’s landing after he’d jumped out of a second floor window. This being what young boys did for fun in 1930s Finland it seems.

But with the invasion, Aimo’s fear of that precious sheet being found was put to rest.

He and his family ended up being evacuated so quickly from their hometown that they had no choice but to leave most of their possessions behind. To Aimo’s relief, that included his mother’s fine blanket that he had put back in its drawer in a panic hoping its owner would never find it.

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In March this year the small, frequently cold, country where I live called Finland was named the happiest one in the world. It’s the eighth time this has happened. Eighth time running, in fact. And, just as I do every year we learn this news, I remember what my father-in-law said to me the first time it happened:

“If we’re happiest, the rest of you must be really miserable.”

Truth is, I’ve never met a Finn who takes this “title” seriously. What kind of person ever would? Nevertheless, the same old stories were published once again on global news websites in an attempt to attract clicks with the promise of the secret to Finnish happiness. Once again they listed the joys of sauna, the Finnish connection to nature, some of the more incisive ones going as far as to mention something about the Finnish “welfare state”.

The NYT even published an article suggesting people, on the recommendation of someone they interviewed in Helsinki, hug a tree to find happiness.

These articles are, of course, pretty ridiculous. I’m not arguing sauna and picking mushrooms and swimming in lakes aren’t pleasant aspects of life here in Finland. But going so far as to suggest these things alone are enough to make us “happy” or uniquely satisfied with life just tastes a little bit, I dunno, ethnocentric to me. As though it means to say that people here are so simple, so basic even, that hugging trees is enough to create perfect contentment, and that other issues such as schools, hospital waiting times, and the “cost of living crisis” are things only people from “more important” countries (the kind of countries from which these articles most often emerge) worry about.

Here’s a hint to any writers who want to spend a weekend in Helsinki next year and report back that the key to happiness is an afternoon getting sweaty in a log cabin: sauna isn’t doing much to reduce the high unemployment rate here nor the increased waiting times for health service appointments.

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Peace following the Winter War was brief. Finland moved to take back the parts of Karelia lost to Russia, and, against the odds, they succeeded at first. Families such as Aimo’s were able to go home. And, as Finnish forces drove the Soviets back past Karelia and well into Russia, life even returned to normal. Aimo continued his advance into teendom with the same spirit as before.

At one point, still too young to join the fight themselves, Aimo and his friends were asked by the local military to help in the war effort by transporting some bread rations across town along with a letter detailing how they were to be distributed.

Aimo and his friends elected instead to bury the letter and to use the bread to make a homemade, lightly alcoholic drink called kalja.

Within a year or so Aimo and those homebrew-making friends of his would enlist and serve in the fight against Soviet Russia themselves. Aimo was only 16.

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I started writing an essay in March in which I wanted to give my thoughts about Finnish happiness. I called it “Comfort Eating in an Emergency”.

My goal with that essay was to give you an honest and personal insight into what I have learned, living among Finns, that might genuinely make a case for what makes people more happy here, or at least more content.

I’m no David Sudeikis but, boy, with the first draft of that thing in front of me did I think you were gonna love it. Raw, thoughtful, full of self-deprecation and fish-out-of-water/stranger in a strange land insights. Classic Wil Reidie. And the lesson was infinitely universal. Finns, or the Finns I have ended up surrounded by, just seem to live so brutally in the present in a way I never knew growing up. They just don’t ascribe so much weight to concern for a potentially threatening tomorrow, they focus with commitment on the joys of today instead.

How could you not love it?

And as I started polishing that essay for publication, I saw a video on my Instagram feed.

It was made by an old school “friend”, a dreadful guy who is now selling his services as a (shudders) “life-coach”.

The video was of him, face to camera, expelling the same self-help, poor man’s Eckhart Tolle drivel that, I then realised, I was probably doing in “Comfort Eating…” as well.

It was at that moment I decided I didn’t want to be a poor man’s Eckhart Tolle, self-help wannabe. And I deleted the essay.

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As the decades passed Aimo would tell few stories of life at war. But there is one he would tell. The story involves an experience of his at a prison camp where he was tasked with guarding Soviet POWs. He was, so the story goes, sat outside their jail and deeply tired one day. If you can believe it, considering the circumstances, he fell asleep. When he woke up he thought he had been blinded. He thought he could see blood dripping down his face, across his eyes. He thought he had been shot. That he had fallen asleep, that the Russians had escaped, and that they’d shot and blinded him. And then, just as he was getting up from his chair and starting to scream in panic, the laughter began. The sound of Russians laughing at him. And he realised he wasn’t blind at all. The sight of Russians laughing at him was proof of that. Still in their cells. It wasn’t his blood that had blinded him. He had simply woken up with the sun in his eyes.

This is the story Aimo would tell.

This and the one about the blanket and that weak alcoholic drink called Kalja that he made with his friends.

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“Onni ei tule etsien, vaan eläen”. I had just moved to Finland when I first heard those words. They mean: “Happiness doesn’t come from searching, only by living.”

The truth is I am a poor man’s Eckhart Tolle, self help cliché. I do believe in the importance of living in the moment, of not hamstringing ourselves with worry for tomorrow. I certainly believe in this more than I do hugging trees or even the use of sauna, much as I adore it. But if I do, it is only possible because of my years living in Finland.

For much of my life I have played the role of someone for whom the joys of today were insignificant to whatever tomorrow might threaten me with. An innocent lump I’d found would always be cancer. An unexpected knock on the door would always be the landlord with eviction papers. Once I was living in Sweden, any letter from the immigration office, until I’d opened it, would surely be news detailing my imminent deportation for some reason.

Habits don’t change in a day, but I associate, rightly or wrongly, my ability to stop thinking this way with the birth of my daughter, in time.

If a thing can be felt only in contrast to its opposite, then that day is the most joyful of my life.

The delivery happened within minutes of getting to the hospital. It was that quick. And just as quickly it became clear something was wrong. Having been handed to my wife, our daughter remained a powdery shade of blue. She wasn’t getting enough air. The nurse rushed to press a switch across the room and a red light shone at the door. Within moments a man in a white coat came through it. He had dark hair and looked like he might have been an Italian footballer in a past life. He said something in Finnish, but he did so too fast for me to translate. All I was really sure of was that once he had left seconds later, and the door had closed behind him, he had taken our daughter from us.

I tried to comfort Silja, my wife, but I couldn’t help but keep staring at the door. I was terrified of it. Of all the doors I’d feared, all the knocks, there had never been a door like that one. I wanted to tell Silja how scared I was, as though externalising the fear might undermine it somehow, make it less real. But I didn’t. Unlike so many things I’d spent time fearing in my life, this fear was of something real and on the other side of a hospital door and it didn’t care the slightest about what I did with it. And as I held Silja’s hand in mine and stroked her hair, I started to feel something I hadn’t expected. My reflection in Silja’s eyes. The reflection of herself in mine that I could never see. Our young son in bed and peacefully asleep at home. There, wrapped around my fear, trying to smother the terror I felt at what had happened and what might happen, something else started to appear. Maybe we would be OK. Whatever happened when the door opened again, I knew we would still have each other.

The doctor returned and our girl was entirely changed. Bright pink. Fluorescent almost. The room was lit by her. She was very congested, he said. She was fine. He was wearing a wooden badge decorated with cartoon bears and the word Lastenlääkäri printed on it. Children’s doctor. I loved him. I didn’t know his name but I knew I would always love him. He was the man who walked through a hospital door and gave me my pink and screaming daughter.

When I got around to texting Tiina, my mother-in-law, it was 5am. I told her about how blue our daughter had been. How they had taken her away so quickly and for so long. And I told her we were back together now. She must have known how worried I still was. She must have known I already had thoughts of oxygen deprivation and brain damage and countless other things in my mind. Four years on and I still occasionally look at the message she sent me.

Remember, what matters is happening now, not what happened before, not what might happen.

Our daughter, Elise, is 3 now. She is as stubborn and loving as her mother, and, in the way she insists on wagging her tiny bottom at me and yelling “bottom wiggle”, I think she might be as ridiculous as me.

I’ve been trying to remember that what matters is happening now ever since I met her.

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At Christmas here in Finland we spend a sizeable chunk of the day visiting the local cemetery. This was a shock at first but I suppose I’ve come to appreciate it.

We spend Christmas every year in a town on the other side of Finland from Karelia called Pori. It is a small town that most Finns, in my experience, don’t tend to think much of. But, to us, it is special. It is the town my wife grew up in. It is the town in which we started our life in Finland together. It is the town, 1000 miles from where I grew up, I now think of as a home.

We visit several graves at Christmas at the cemetery here in Pori. The one we spend the most time at is that of my wife’s maternal grandparents. Though it is brutally cold at this time of year, our son and daughter are old enough now to take a candle each, have it lit, and place it on the grave. Their candles, added to those countless others decorating the countless other graves across the dark, midwinter scene, are like countless stars shining on a moonless night. Elise loves stars. She has a little light box that projects multicolour stars onto the ceiling of her bedroom. I once tried to explain to her the light from stars can be hundreds, even thousands of years old. And that looking at stars is like looking into long ago, proof that the past is never really gone. She did her bum wiggle in response. This is why I appreciate this strange cemetery visit so much. It is a reminder that those long gone are never really gone either. They are part of today as well.

The grave at which my kids leave a candle is granite grey and modest. It lists the shared profession of the two occupants: näytellijät. Actors. The names, chiselled away in handwriting-like script, are Hilkka, my wife’s grandmother, and Aimo, her grandfather who, as a boy, once hid his mother’s finest sheet having made an Aimo-shaped hole in it.