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Jim McCrory

Happiness Comes From Sambovikt

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Edited by Jim McCrory, Thursday, 12 Sept 2024, 18:00


Sambovikt: The contentment derived from long-term trusting relationships



Image kindly provided by https://unsplash.com/@whereisfarid



I was having a chat with a man who was doing work in my house recently. In our brief conversations, we had much in common. We both lost our parents in our teenage years and one thing becomes apparent, the loss hits harder as you get older. In both our cases, it was death that caused the loss.

The conversation rewound me back to the mid-90s whilst crossing over from Newcastle to Gothenburg on the Princess of Scandinavia. I had a drink before bedtime and went upstairs to the top deck to shake off the vodka effects. The Northern sky was clear, all the stars were out, all of them in infinite silence. Being alone, they belonged to me; no one else would ever see this exact constellation again. Feeling helpless in the moment, I became like Bergman in The Magic Lantern, who also had his demons, I silently concealed my insane wail and feeling imprisoned forever as I thought of my adopted father whom I lost when I was 12 years old. I mused:

Meet me amidst the ocean

Under my Northern sky

To the light of constellations

As our restless stars pass by.

 

This is why I like the Swedish word, sambovict, It stands upright and for me, it is what it means to be human. Too many children are growing up without one of their parents, quite often the father. I pray for the pain they go through and will go through in the future.  Happiness comes from secure long-term trusting relationships, not only for the couple, but the children born to the couple.

My father closed his eyes when I was twelve, I understand the pain a child goes through in the absence of the father figure. Children need guidance, daily direction, and bedtimes stories that capture their imagination. The stories that make us human. Goodness, I recall my dad reading David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and Pinocchio. Many single fathers and mothers rise to the occasion, but trying to prop up house and home and deal with the emotional fallout of divorce intensifies these pressures.

Children also need both parents to say, “Well done” or both parents to be honest and suggest improvements.

But when one parent is not around. Well… they grow up with a deep sense of loneliness and the feeling that something is missing in their life.


“ Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection.

 

Colossians 3:14 WEB


Writing:  © 2024 Jim McCrory

 

 


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Jim McCrory

On Travel Writing

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Edited by Jim McCrory, Thursday, 12 Sept 2024, 17:59


As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Proverbs 27:17



Image kindly provided by https://unsplash.com/@raphaeldas


The art of travel is only a branch of the art of thinking

                                                        Mary Wollstonecraft


On Travel Writing

I awoke early; that time when thoughts rush in and fill the senses with sharp anxiety. It was June 24, the Ayrshire forecast of sunshine and dark cloud reflected the conflicting mood of the nation. ‘The British people have voted to leave the European Union, and their will must be respected.’ The politician’s carefully written statement sent shock waves throughout Europe. It was like living in a village after the Vikings had raided.

A film emerged, a captured memory in time that took me back to July 1995 and a sleepy little village tucked away in the small commune of Målsryd. A Swedish girl who had been my daughter’s pen-pal since youth, visited us in ‘94 and her family wished to reciprocate the hospitality. I never needed much persuasion to accept. I was fourteen when I first fell for the country. The influence of my teacher who painted images alongside the music of Sibelius and Grieg created a love affair with a mistress I never met. Unlike the poet, Yeats, I am not rooted in this ‘perpetual place’ where I grew up. No, Scandinavia affected me in such a way that it felt like my proper home; an emotion the Germans call fernweh, the strange and paradoxical longing for a place never visited.

So, we spent the year learning Swedish and on July 16, before sunrise, we packed up the Ford Granada with the usual tartan kitsch; a tin of shortbread, Tartan Special Ale, placemats, and a bottle of Laphroaig and made our way to the North Shields Ocean Terminal to board the Princess of Scandinavia for the overnight journey with a plan to stay a few days with Elisabeth’s family and then tour the country, including Stockholm.

Our onboard cabin was the size of a box room with four bunks. After some negotiating, my wife and I had the lower bunks whilst my son and daughter slept on top. We then set out to survey the vast vessel with a sense of excitement and finally to emerge on the top deck to watch the North-East coastline disappear in the wake.

The family went to explore the shop while I retired to a cosy corner in the sitting area to get more sense of the culture by reading Ingmar Bergman’s, The Magic Lantern.

Some of the Swedes looked eager to communicate. A look, a smile, a nod. I hadn’t been this popular since my adopted family received me back in ‘56. Likely they were suffering from vemod; a pensive melancholy triggered, on this occasion, by post-vacation blues. By clinging to a Brit, they were prolonging the adventure like a nicotine addict has that ‘last’ cigarette.

Collective roars emerged from the lounge. Sweden was beating Bulgaria in the FIFA World Cup. The mood among the Swedes was one of… well, overlyckliga (overjoyed). Swedes are characterised by the social mores of lagome (not too much, not too little). Overjoyed in their culture would amount to a subdued euphoria as no one dare stand out in the crowd. Myth reports that lagome originated from the Vikings. The celebratory horn filled with mead would be passed around and partook in such a way that every Norseman took only his fair share. Lagome presses in on modern culture and dictates that no one dare overdo it. Unlike the Midwestern Swedes in Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion who see their women as strong, men handsome and children, above average, the fatherland natives modestly bottle such pretentiousness as they would a jar of lingonberry preserve. I feel a deep respect for such modesty in a world where positive values are on a downhill piste.

I wondered if we, raised in the second city of the empire, would have traits that would appear strange to Swedes. As a child, my mother would step on a bus, lay her shopping down, turn to everyone on the bus and sigh, saying, ‘that’s been me all day’. Immediately, a conversation would begin, with strangers participating enthusiastically, behaviour that would make Swedes freeze with social anxiety, I’m assured. I wonder with my confident extroversion if I can irritate foreigners in the same way a loud tourist at the breakfast table in a Highland B & B can vex me. It was time for self-reflection. Other cultures teach us who we are. Their characteristics, like a raised mirror, help us compare ourselves, our values, albeit we look through the glass darkly.


Writing:  © 2024 Jim McCrory


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