Finns love nature and take huge pride in their forests and the creatures that live there. The nature brings Finns peace and quiet, which they love by the way. Going away to a cottage by a lake is a dream vacation for many. I think it’s the chance of being able to slow down, not having to run into any strangers and just hang out with your close ones or listening to the quiet. It really brings us back into ourselves.
I personally miss the quiet since I moved to a larger city, there really isn’t a place for me to be where I wouldn’t hear any sounds of cars or industry. I hadn’t even realized it before last Christmas I was visiting my parents, and I was out with our dog Pepe. We were walking and my winter clothes were chafing together until he stopped to sniff on something, and I had to stop also. It was so calming not hearing anything but my own breathing and looking up at the sky and seeing the stars and with the crispy cold air pinching my cheeks. I stood there for a while just taking it in, because I realised, I hadn’t been so at peace and so undisturbed in such a long time.
We love the quiet, we don’t talk to strangers on the streets or even maybe look at them because we want to give them the quiet, we all seem to crave. That is not the way though. The quiet does us good but the most random and fun and ordinary human interactions also make us feel good. It feels nice when a cashier tells us to have a good evening and they seem like they mean it. It feels great when someone looks you in the eyes on the street and smiles at you. But mostly we just walk by each other quietly as to not disturb each other.
Have you ever sat in the quiet with someone and had it feel really very comfortable? When you can do that with a Finnish person you have won that person over, because we are in a habit of making a lot of things awkward.
I’m going to end this at that. In conclusion, don’t disturb Finns in the streets, except please do, take us to a cottage, pick berries with us, bake a pie of those berries with us and end the day in a sauna and just sit quietly by the lake cooling off looking into the horizons.
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