Notes from the world's "happiest" country
And a word on what's coming next from me
“Happiness doesn’t come from searching, only by living.”
- Old Finnish saying
Since you likely don’t live in Finland, I’m going to assume you didn’t hear the news last week.
Finland, for the 7th year in a row, has been named the World’s Happiest Country. Wait, was that the sound of your eyes rolling? Suspicious about the idea of ranking countries by such a nebulous concept as “happiness”?
It’s OK, I’m with you.
And, believe me, Finland is with you, too.
Take my Finnish father-in-law’s reaction back when Finland had been named happiest country for just the third time in a row.
“If we are happiest,” he told me in his hushed, barely audible tone, “then the rest of you must be really miserable.”
This is why I’m not about to spend 3000 self-help words detailing the simple steps you can take to be happy and carefree like us sauna-loving, raw fish-eating types up in this cold, dark corner of northern Europe. In fact, agreeing that Finland really is the Happiest Country in the World might just be the most un-Finnish thing I can imagine.
But since life in Finland as a British immigrant, and being part of a Finnish family, is of course an important subject to me, I hope you’ll indulge me today and let me share a few thoughts on how I think life in Finland has helped make me a little happier.
And it’s not just sauna and raw salmon.
I’ll start by assuming you don’t know that many Finnish people. But instead of insulting almost 6 million people by painting a half-assed, stereotypical picture of them for you, I’m going to let one of their own jokes do so for me. A joke that did the rounds around the start of the Covid pandemic.
It went something like:
“Did you hear about the new social distancing rules?”
“No, what are they?”
“We can only be 2 metres from each other.”
“Fucking hell… 2 metres? Why so close?”
Here’s the short of it: Finns like to keep their distance, they like personal space. They don’t value small talk, and the idea of an “awkward silence” makes no sense here because silence is the most comfortable thing in the world to a Finn.
The consequence of this is that words, when they are spoken, really seem to matter. Take simple promises for example. Finns refuse to make even the most innocuous promise unless they know, with certainty, they can follow through with it. And, I’m not exaggerating when I say this runs through all aspects of life here.
If a Finn bumps into an old friend on the street and, after a few hurried remarks, suggests they “simply must meet for a coffee next week”, you can be sure they’re going for that coffee next week.
Honestly, I know from experience if the same thing happens to two people in the UK, that invitation is likely little more than a polite, non-awkward, way of bringing the conversation to a close.
I remember the first time this commitment to honesty, to not even barely promising more than can surely be delivered, was made brutally clear to me.
It was back in the middle of Covid, 3 years ago now in March 2021. My wife was pregnant with our daughter when she woke up in terrible pain one night. My father-in-law and I rushed her to hospital.
It took a few minutes of talking to the admissions nurse before I realised what was about to happen. Once we had explained my wife’s symptoms and she had had a plastic ID tag wrapped around her wrist, I heard the words I’d already started to dread. I wasn’t allowed to stay with her. Covid rules. I didn’t know anything at the time. If we were losing the baby, if my wife was in real danger, and I had never been more afraid. And all I was allowed to do was abandon her there in a sterile hospital, alone.
But that story is for another time. What matters here is what happened when I got home that night. What my mother-in-law did.
She had been at my apartment to watch over my son who was, thank god, still fast asleep. Being a midwife herself, I asked her all the questions I felt might reassure me. What did she think was happening? Was this normal? My wife would be OK, right? The pregnancy would be fine, right? I was desperate for her to tell me everything would be OK. I needed to hear something, anything, that might that let me know it wasn’t as bad as I feared.
But she wouldn’t do it.
As much as I wished she would tell me everything would be fine, she didn’t promise that. She didn’t promise anything. All she would tell me was that we didn’t know yet, that I needed to wait, and to be here for my son. As though to promise anything more could be to promise something that might not end up true.
Finns, certainly my mother-in-law the Finn, are just too honest to do that.
It took a day and a night but my wife did come back home to us.
And our daughter is 2 and a half now.
She likes My Little Pony and shooting me with water pistols.
You might think what I’m about to say is a criticism. I hope it becomes clear why it isn’t one.
I have never heard my Finnish family, my wife, her parents and sister, say “I love you” to each other. Not once in a decade.
This was difficult to understand at first. And so different to the kind of love I knew growing up.
I was raised in a family that shared words of love constantly. It was natural to us. The very worst thing I could do as a little boy, if my mother had really pissed me off for god knows what reason, was to make a point of not telling her I loved her at the school gates.
These same words, in the family I’m now a part of in Finland, just don’t hold the same importance. A declaration of love, being so subordinate to showing love, seems almost unnecessary here.
As a Finn I once worked with said when I mentioned this to her: “if we say I love you once, you can assume we keep loving you forever.”
It isn’t the promise for a coffee that matters, after all, that’s just the ending of a conversation.
What matters is if you show up.
By happy coincidence as I finished this newsletter today, British actor Emma Thompson published a letter to the Finnish people in one of our biggest newspapers. In it she details her impressions of Finnish people having been filming here the past few months. In the context of her Finnish film crew working in extreme weather, she writes:
If the weather is wrong, they focus on what can we do and never on what we are prevented from doing. Their attitude – at least in my experience, is born of a resolution and a resilience that I can only guess must come with the territory. The land is ever-changing, full of drama, full of change, which makes it complex and demanding. There is no point in fighting it – one must work with it, adapt to it, change with it and above all, respect it.
It was encouraging to read this on the day I wanted to say something to you of Finnish happiness. I feel her impressions are so familiar to what I have started to learn from the people that surround me now here in Finland.
Impressions such as these are why the memory of my mother-in-law that frightening night matters to me still. All I wanted to do that night was be with my wife. Nothing else mattered. I’m ashamed now to say it, but the truth is I wanted my parents-in-law to spare me the bother of my son so I could go back to the hospital and wait (and worry) for my wife. But the more I considered my mother-in-law’s words, the more I knew how pointless such an action was.
The next morning I made my son his breakfast. I was there for him. Not outside the hospital ward vying for control over something I was powerless over. In helping me let go of what I couldn’t change, I think I became better able to take care of what I could do. And what I could do was care for my little boy.
If there is anything special to be found in Finnish happiness, then I’m putting money on it being a consequence of this honesty, the primacy of the lived present over a future we might be searching for. Because this is an honesty not just to others, but to oneself. It is an honesty that refuses to promise good things will happen to you. It is an honesty that accepts the possibility of change, of sadness even. But it is an honesty, I think, that leaves you resigned to better face that change once it arrives. And it is an honesty that refuses to promise harm will come your way either. An honesty that encourages you to face the present as the only thing that can be faced. The only thing we have any power over.
I think this focus on the present in place of “positive thinking” and overt optimism is why Finns also have a reputation for dourness and pessimism. If I’ve done anything with these words today I hope I’ve started to show why this reputation is not quite accurate. Like Emma Thompson suggests, we can only work with the situation at hand, we can’t change it, but we can change with it.
I am still a stranger in this strange land. I’m still learning. But I’m starting to feel this honesty can lead me somewhere. It is leading me to a place in which I’m happier than I’ve ever been.
I promised some news didn’t I…
I’m no longer a recovering line cook, just a line cook.
For a long time I’ve known my heart is still in restaurant cooking and, after what feels like too long away, in a few weeks I’ll be cooking full-time once again.
And I can’t wait.
Now my memoirs of a line cook are over, I am excited about starting the, wait for it, Diaries of a Line Cook. There are lots of food newsletters in the world. I hope my Diaries, first-hand stories about my working life as a restaurant cook, will be a unique thing for you to read here (and fun for me to write).
I am also planning to share more of my non-fiction writing here. These essays will explore not just food but also my life and experiences here in Finland as an immigrant, father, and struggling language/culture learner. I am putting these essays under the title How to Fail at Being Finnish and I really think you’ll enjoy them.
The Diaries and my Being Finnish non-fiction essays will go out on Tuesdays (at least twice a month) as a paid subscriber bonus.
My usual weekend newsletter will continue weekly for free subscribers.
So if you found this week’s newsletter interesting, and you want to read more about restaurant kitchen life and my non-fiction essays, please upgrade below. I consider this newsletter a second job. And your paid support makes a real difference to my life and work. If you can afford it, please do take the leap and take advantage of the 25% discount today.
Thanks for reading,
Wil
Whoa, that quote was nice: "Happiness doesn’t come from searching, only by living." -Finnish saying
Makes me think to: "You can only have bliss if you don’t chase it." -Henepola Gunaratana
Thanks Will , totally sums up the Finns that I know , why waste time , thought and emotion on what you can’t affect instead of dealing with what you can . A pretty good way of living in my opinion