The winners of the Madara and Cattier packages are Nina and Suvi, with whom I will be in contact shortly. Thank you to all who participated – as always, I loved reading your comments!
Collectively, your words seemed to spell out “everything is okay” and “you are enough”. It made me wonder what it says about the world we live in right now. There seems to be an atmosphere of worry, fear, exhaustion; a longing for something deeper, for some place where money or its lack, managing, performing, and personal achievements were not the end-game. Then again, there is also a sense of trust.
I wanted to tell the world that I wish to love well. I did not just mean loving my partner, my friends, my nearest and dearest, but loving the whole world, loving life.
To me, this means acting as truthfully and with as much love, on every level, as I possibly can – towards myself, towards life, and the world. It means not hurting people with my words or my actions. It means leaving an upsetting truth unvoiced, if voicing it would bring pain to someone. I believe in honesty, but our interpretations of other people are just that – interpretations, and I don’t believe we have the right to use verbal violence against one another. I wish to love those that are closest to me well, even when that feels impossible. I want to understand that people are walking along their own paths, at their own pace, and I can hurry neither them nor myself.
I want my actions to speak of love. I want to share something good with others, to offer my help when I can give it, without asking anything in return. To open the door, offer my seat, or a listening ear; to bring people together. I want to be a responsible consumer, to support small businesses, ethical businesses, ecological businesses. To choose my food, my drink, my cosmetics, and my detergents with an aim of reducing the stress on our environment, and yet without demanding too much of myself. I want our future generations to live and to enjoy clean air, water, and nature as much as is possible. The choices I make as a consumer should be automatic and effortless, not stressful.
Carrying all this is a love for myself and my day-to-day life. I want to be good to myself, to love myself well, and to feel well. To express my wishes, desires, and thoughts, to risk being thought an idiot. Only then can I make a true, deep, and enduring change in the world; only then can I love others well, too. I want to make decisions based on what feels good in my heart, not what other people think, or what they want me to do. Loving ourselves means setting boundaries. It means not sacrificing ourselves for something that kills us inside. It means letting no one (including ourselves) treat us badly – while remembering to practice nonviolence against others.
Following your own true desires means taking a leap of faith for the sake of freedom. It means not having any ready-made answers, solutions, or certainty to help you. The flip-side of freedom is living with the choices you have made. Accepting fear, facing the things that terrify you, until you can say “so what?” Sometimes it is exhausting and unbearable, at other times, it is inspiring beyond belief. The process of learning, of realization, is never-ending and understanding that will awaken a thirst for the true adventure of life.
I will do my best to listen to, and realize, my wish every day. Some days I’ll do perfectly, on others only adequately. And that is perfectly fine.
Have a beautiful week, everyone!
Photos Katja Kokko
Translation Katja Nikula
