When I was a kid my grandfather used to have this summerhouse on an island in Snappertuna, Finland.
What happened to that place is a story in itself but that’s not the point of this posting. The point is that it was probably one of the few places I ever had the feeling that I belonged there. Other was probably my grandmother’s house in Kotka. Now that all my grandparents are dead and buried and their places sold, I have had many times the sad feeling that I don’t really have any places where I belong. This is an overwhelmingly sad feeling to have if you have not ever experienced it. Think of the feeling that you get on a busy airport where people just run around but nobody’s there to stay. The feeling that everything is temporary and plastic and you could just make do without.
Sure, I have a house where we live with my wife and daughter, but this is a suburban home build on a land that’s rented from the city of Helsinki. It’s more of an investment and a necessity to have rather than something where I feel like I belong. When I spend time here, I don’t feel like I’m in the right place where I’m supposed to be. Sure, here’s a lot of people I love and like, friends nearby and all a person needs for a happy life, but there’s the feeling of not belonging here.
For example, when I woke up on mornings in my grandfather’s place and walked to the beachfront as a kid, I could feel a very strong bond with the land, sea, nature and sky. The feeling is such that you can say: “This is where I’m supposed to be and I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
I have to wonder how much of this is really just about me getting older and longing for the worry-free days of childhood and teenage years, but I definitely need the sense of belonging somewhere back. Currently, I wouldn’t have any bigger issues if I were to leave Finland altogether. I really don’t own anything here, it’s just temporary arrangements around rent and ownership I could easily monetize and move the fuck away.
Like a plant needs some roots, I need my own spot on earth where I can get at least some of the feeling of belonging back. I need to have nature around me, I want to live by clean water. Sad fact thought is that this might be too late for me. I would like to offer my kids the feeling that they live in the place that’s for them to live in and not some temporary plastic dream of consumerism and empty popular ideals. I would still like to believe that there are such places around earth somewhere, and I think they can even be found in Finland, even if our elected representatives are trying to do everything to kill the concept of heritage and replace it with ownership.
I wonder if this posting is the first step towards me moving my family to the countryside. The practicalities of that will be hard to solve, since somehow still IT work requires physical presence. But now that I have said it openly, it sounds good enough. I’m so fucking sick of metropolitan areas filled with bullshit cruft rather than what I actually need.