Sinisyys...

Summer makes us come out like flowers, happy and free. Wintertime is another story; it is a much bigger challange to show a happy face when its cold, wet and windy. Lack of sunlight and vitamin D makes us tired. Winter is more introvert time, summer is extrovert. Perhaps that’s the way, we follow the nature. Perhaps that makes us natural.

Could it be that as we see and realice the maddness of the world we have created, the least we can do if be sad and depressed about it. Is depression a healthy reaction to a sick world? Even if it is heavy, I would rather be sad about it than live in the shallow surface of material world.

I think that the Finnish history under the rule of Russia and Sweden has made us quite humble, making us feel we are somehow “lower-cast”. The same reason has also made us quite strong.

The last generations lived the war and famin and it was not that long ago. Things have changed so fast, that our souls have had a hard time catching up. Pace is fast and as we try to keep up, we have forgotten to live. Forgotten that life is for living and not for serving technology and money and more and more. Our souls need feeding, as without if dries. It’s fine as long as you keep running after more, when nothing is enough, we are never enough. But if you stop, or more often if and when life makes you stop, you can see your soul a size of a rasin, where do you stand? What else can follow but depression...

Depression is a serious illness and has to be treated. It is an illness as anyother . How can we have such a mystified picture about if when at the same time we are flodded with information about this that and the other. We talk about all our aches and pains, but when it comes to an illness of the head, we dare not say. We keep if under the table where it grows until it bangs its head on it and spills our coffee.

My dear brother took his own life when he was only 24 yars old, after a short period of depression.

I was angry whis my society and blamed it for demanding so much of young men. Get a good and accepted education and job, or you are not worthy. I guess he was in a dark tunnel where he saw no light at the end of it. I declared war against Finnland and left abroad for many years. One day I had to return to dig deeper into the roots, to try to understand.

Finnish people have a natural nature-connection. But somehow that has become less appreciated and other things have become more fashionable. We are a bit lost and don’t even ask what is the meaning of life. I try to remind myself that I am here to learn what it is to be a humanbeing, with everything that comes with it. Happy, sad, silly, clever, stupid, selfish, emphatic, brave, scared and blue. Human.

-Ira Tirinen-
Finland