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15th of May 2014


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They are cute :-)
I have one question for you: Are you nostalgic?
Sometimes I miss good times too much(I am 1999 born) but times before my birth too. Children was children, games was games(I mean games out), people was nice and good, music was better than now(sometimes) there was not crysis.. etc

First a story, this happened some years ago: I was visiting an elder couple living near me. From their house it is five minutes by bicycle to my place, or five minutes walking on a path in the forest. We had evening coffee and discussed things. The lady said that she often misses times of her childhood - even though it was the war years, all she can remember was that life was simple and nice, there were a lot of people living in the countryside and they had great times together... Well, I didn't counter that, as I also admire tradition and old times, people working with their skills and muscles intead of using heavy machinery. Then I was about to go home (either by bicycle or walking, I don't remember), and the lady was horrified: "No, you don't need to walk, we will take you by car!". I had to use all of my diplomacy to convince them that I really don't need a ride with a car. It is only five minutes to my home and I like to enjoy the atmosphere of walking / cycling in the late summer evening. (And to myself I was silently thinking that this is so typical - first people say that they would like to have the old times back - and in the next secod they prefer using a car and enjoying the conveniences of modern standard of life.)

I think I have seen this with other people too. Sometimes it is hard to see how modern stuff makes our lives easy, and how we assume some things for given. Like electricity, and most notably the electric light. Here in the Finnish countryside there are remote houses which got electricity as late as in the 1970's. And before that people just used candles and oil lanterns for lightning. For someone who is born with electric lights, it is not easy to imagine how life would be without easy source of light.,,

Well, so generally speaking I have always been bit reserved towards nostalgy. I don't know if the old times really were any better - some things were better, some worse, and we can't cherry pick only the good stuff. Also, when I was something like 12 years old I started reading about zen-buddhism, which greatly helped me to endure all the not-so-nice-stuff in our family. And one of the central insights was that people make life harder for themselves when they long for something which is not possible. I practiced that with meditation, to free my mind of non-realistic wishes and longings. And diving deeper into that I found something which I thought to be impossible =) I found a source of peace of mind, tranquility in the middle of the hell of life. Or, at least, a spark of it. A path to travel.

All this said, I greatly do admire pre-modern times, all the skills and the whole lifestyle. People working side by side, with only little mahcinery to help, most of work done by muscles (either human or horse). Those people knew a lot of things which are essential to survival. A lot of valuable stuff my generation has forgotten, as we didn't need it anymore. I'd like to re-learn some of that =)

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