For the Finns, True Luxury is Time and Solitude

Picture it: a major metropolis where over a million people are bustling about, living a fast paced life, going to a 9 to 5 job, picking up the kids after school, driving them to hockey practice, and finally getting home from work to cook dinner for a husband, four children, and of course the family dog (or cat). Then after dinner comes housework: laundry, dusting, vacuuming, picking up toys the kids have strewn all over the floor, and a husband who has quietly fallen asleep on the couch. Bedtime is 9:00 PM for the children; 10:00 PM for the adults. Come the next day at 7:00 AM sharp, the routine is repeated all over again, only at a much faster pace. The family, especially the mother, is perpetually exhausted, of course.

What exactly is the goal of such fast living? To make a buck? Make a buck and be socially active? Make a buck, be socially active, and have a family to take care of? No, the goal of fast living is to acquire lots of material goods. Think about it for a second. If a married couple has four children like in the above example, that couple will wind up having to spend well over five thousand dollars a year on computers, iPods, the latest fashions, Nike shoes, and Nintendo. That's not even including the DeBeers diamond necklace the daughter might ask for on her sixteenth birthday. That's a lot of stuff, and no question about it, Americans like their stuff. But is all that stuff a real luxury?

Not to the Finns it isn't. Finland is one of the long, narrow nations that makes up the northernmost part of western Europe. It lies next to Scandinavia although technically the Finns are not at all Scandinavian; they just share a border with Sweden to the left, and Russia to the right. While the Finland, Sweden, and Norway have managed to transform their nations into socialist paradises, Finland has managed to find and acknowledge true luxuries: time and solitude.

Most Americans do not even consider time and solitude in the manner the Finns do. Few Americans are experts at time management and don't even know where they would be without extra time in order to get everything done. Solitude, forget that. Nowadays if one is not some high-powered social butterfly, one might be considered an outcast, but not necessarily so. Children have it even harder: if they don't talk constantly (though some parents might tell their kids to shut up in order to have some peace and quiet) they get labeled as being autistic. Yet for other people, the constant being around other people is not considered to be counterproductive in the least. It may be next to impossible to truly achieve something on one's own merit but hey, those individuals will have lots of company. Barbra Streisand put it the best way when she sang "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world..." Maybe "No man is an island" in modern American society, especially when others are always badgering you for this, that, and the other thing. It is a form of interdependency that isn't healthy for anyone.

Creative people, which includes artists, writers, and the like, know the value of solitude and time. Of course, for people like myself, as a writer, solitude and time is not even a luxury: it is a required necessity. Without that necessity, one can starve. Not everyone has the creative talents that require these two things yet at some point, are necessary for human survival. If a man or woman sends eight or nine hours a day constantly being around other people, that person will want time to himself or herself either at home or someplace else.

Not all Americans share the "He who has the most toys wins" mindset. In that respect, those Americans share something in common with the Finns: being able to get away from it all, acquiring certain things for a particular reason and not to show off to the rest of American society or to try and be "better" for having those things. Considering the benefits one has when not collecting lots of stuff - a neat, clean home, no clutter - it is only rational the Finns can afford to have time and solitude for themselves without having to worry about keeping up with the Joneses.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090501/cm_csm/ycorson