Life: health, money and people?

I've been thinking a lot about my life lately. In good and in bad. This is probably because my dad is not doing well and I find it hard being all the way here. I don't know if it is hard more because I'm worried for him or because I feel seperated and alone. Probably both. Luckily, I know he is not alone and I am also fortunate to have both modern technology which enables me to be in contact with everyone back home (and to fly me home over spring break) and also to have people here, who are very supportive and helpful.

I've been talking a lot with quite a few people about all sorts of things during the last few months. Despite all the worry I have for my father and my family, I still cannot help but to be happy how well things have gone for us for the most part. I don't think life is ever supposed to be all fun and games, but despite all the hard times and difficulties we have faced, lots of things have still turned out for the best. Not everything and always, but for the most part. Having met people, who have in my age already experienced serious illness, first personally and then with their younger siblings, or people who have lost not one but both of their parents to cancer before the age I lost my mother, and who still lead as normal and happy lives as life can be, just makes me appreciate all the possibilities there are, even after a life of difficulties.


I do realize not everyone can necessarily be as lucky as me or the people I have encountered, and many things in life depend on the simple fact of where one is born. At the moment, I am reading a book by Pamela Constable, Fragments of Grace, for my journalism class. Especially in my current situation many of the stories have hit me pretty hard, not least the autobiographical sequences. Some of her experiences and thoughts awoken in "exotic" lands I can relate to based on my own travels, even if my travels have of course not been anything as extreme as her travels in war torn areas. But it is also interesting to notice how easy it is to be blind to one's own familiar surroundings and the evils in one's own society. Maybe it is so, because elsewhere one is usually more of an outside observer, with not that many personal attachments to the occurences in the surroundings. Maybe that's why it is easier to observe more objectively elsewhere, even if the impressions are somewhat tainted by one's own frame of reference.


It's been interesting to notice in the book for example, that when she is comparing the other places she has lived in with the U.S., the author doesn't really bring up any issues related to the poverty in her own country (at least hasn't this far in the book). She does tell about other "evils" she notices every time she returns home, but most of them have to do with the ever more consumeristic and entertainment appreciating culture in the States; usually things related to having and spending money, not the issues that arise when people don't have it. However, for me (and even more so for my friend living in New York) it has for example been very shocking and sometimes unnerving to see how many homeless people there are here and this just in the downtown areas. Also, all the personal accounts I got to hear last semester in my education class, the inequalities in the public school system, the huge difference between the students' home neighbourhoods' income levels and violence statistics is just something inconceivable for me.


However, at the same time it is very much likely that I am just as oblivious to similar things back home. It is true I don't pay much attention the "professional" or less professional drunks that disturb D. so much in Finland. Also, I don't know what it is like to be an unemployed single parent or how difficult it can be to live in Finland as an immigrant. There are so many realities in this world and only one of them is the one I know. In the original sense of the word, it is an awesome thought.



Enough of my outpouring. All of this is of course in honour of Friends' Day, which we have back home instead of Valentine's day. To save you all dear friends from having to read any more of my deep thoughts on life, I will leave you now by wishing you all Hyvää ystävänpäivää! You are the people mentioned in the headline, I just never got that far, when trying to save the best for last :) So thanks to all of you for being so great! I honestly don't know what I would've done or would do without you in my life. And of course, a special thanks to my four devoted readers; it's nice to know some one else besides me might some day read this text :)