I was planning to share the joy of finding all my favorite plants and flowers in my new garden, and then I read the news of yet another shooting in Finland. It’s heart-breaking.
In Hyvinkää, a small town some 50 km from Helsinki, so far two people are dead and a third one is fighting for her life. Several others are injured. All young people in their twenties, just about to graduate and start their lives.
The shooter was a young guy, eighteen years old. It seems he was shooting randomly. In the middle of the night, he had taken position on a rooftop and aimed at people gathered downtown Hyvinkää to party, hang out or just spend a beautiful summer night outside.
We may have a very good education system, but we sure need to learn more about expressing our feelings, dealing with negative emotions, sharing concerns, asking for help, showing care and friendship, looking other people in the eye, encouraging children without fear of them getting too proud, telling our loved ones we love them, saying it aloud if we are in need of more love, care and acceptance.
If this nation cannot change its ways, we’re doomed.
Another saddening example of our incapability of dealing with negative emotions is just a few days old. When Finland lost to Russia in the ice-hockey world championships, Helsinki Police Department had an exceptionally busy night related to domestic violence.
So I’m sharing these forget-me-nots to everyone in need of consolation and hope today, myself included. I have no idea what was going on in the shooter’s head, I’m not justifying his deed in any way, I don’t accept it or ever want to see anything like it again, but here’s a thought. Maybe he needed to be seen and accepted, not forgotten, and sadly found an extreme way of making his voice heard. Forget-me-not.
♥ In the meantime: The social democratic party of Finland is getting a facelift. The youngest person elected to the presidium is only 25. About time!
♥ Song of the day: John Mayer, Heartbreak warfare
Yalotar 
I was so sorry to hear about it. Be safe.
Thanks. It is shocking to hear these news again and again. We had a shooting incident in a school just two months ago, luckily no one died, but surely the event left a mark to many. Something is seriously wrong here.
I agree with you that Finnish people should learn how to be more open. I have some Finnish friends who live in small towns (which I mean life there is more quiet and less eventful) and they seem to have such kind of problems. They feel depressed with their lives but aren’t able to share with anybody. They think why they would bother others because of their own problems. The over-introverted side of Finn could be really harmful.
Hey Msanhle, you’ve got a point there. Why are we so shy and feel like a burden to people around us, I wonder? There might be something in the way we raise boys and girls, with norms that are not questioned enough and deeply built into our culture. I mean a humans grow into what they learn from people around them. In addition to this, our culture strongly values individualism.