49

I turned 49 yesterday. Kind of an odd one. You have all these birthdays once you become an adult; 21, 30, 40, that kind of mean something as milestones, then you have a parade of non-descript, generic birthdays in between. The electronic well-wishes from around the world are my favorite thing about social media. It gives my birthdays context and human meaning; a great place to reflect and remember how you know each person who cared enough to type something to you.

But 49 is kind of like the warning-rocks-in-the-road-ahead-sign birthday. I’m in relatively good health, at least from my personal-emotional- and daily-living-sense. The person I feel am, is somewhere around 28 years old with 49 years of life experience, except when I wake up in the middle of the night to pee and I hear my non-dopamine-enhanced old-man feet shuffling slowly along the floor and realize, that’s me who sounds like that walking. I feel I still get after every day with the vigor and attitude of a young man. The salt and pepper in my beard, when I lapse on shaving and my sideburns are truth tellers though, even though my hair itself is still largely playing along to the young man inside me. But there it is, looming. Half a century is within a year.

I’ve noticed recently that memories that formed my life that don’t seem that long ago are actually from a very long time ago. Like, 25 years ago. Am I the only one doing this? The trip with Ntala to the Europa Cup in 1992 for example—28 years ago. What?! The Salt Lake City Olympics. Come on. They just happened! I got interviewed for a podcast a couple weeks ago that is a retrospective for the people who worked on those games—like me—to look back and relive. It was 19 years ago this February. Who is doing this to me?

Time is, I guess.

I recently conceptualized even deeper how long 49 years is. A friend of ours in Jyväskylä, whom we’ve yet to see due largely to her pregnancy and birth, had twins not long ago. I told Taavi and Iita on my birthday, that when I was born like the twins, the people who were 49 at that time had been born in 1922. Wo...

I had obviously calculated that statistic in my head before saying it, but as the words came out of my mouth, they hung in slow motion in the space in front of me, sounding right but feeling very wrong as thought turned to words spoken—something I’m usually very good at and fluid with. But this threw me off. Because, well, that sounds crazy!

This birthday realization shows just how far generation overlaps span, and how generational perspectives from those in my lifetime are vastly different. I felt a duty to feel greater kinship to and understanding of the 49 year olds in the year I was born.

Two 49 year olds on my 1971 birthday, one in Finland and one the United States, would have had very different cultural experiences to each other than a kid born in Finland the same day as me. My current whereabouts is a case in point. The chances of a Finn and an American each born in 1922 were relatively small of them crossing paths, let alone seeing each other’s country. Their daily lives would have similar technological experiences depending on how rural or urban they were. Yet they would be bound together by world events far more than compared to the 49 year-olds when THEY were born, whose birthdays were 1873.

They both grew up as the telegraph-then-telephone, the newspaper, the streetcar, train, automobile, bus, and eventually airplane, all shrunk the world in ways unimaginable to anyone 49 years older could have anticipated. Daily access to electricity, the lightbulb, the icebox-then-fridge/freezer, and central heating all would’ve transformed the norms of daily living to an incredible level, in the span of just a few decades. They’d see a man on a television, step onto the moon.

The Finn would’ve have been born into a 5-year-old nation state, while the American would have been born into a growing international political power that was just learning how to handle its post-Great-War status as international peace maker and growing industrial giant. While Finland was fledgling, the United States was just beginning to soar.

Both would have had lives defined almost entirely by World War II, a clash made more lethal by greater advances in communication and weaponry. Circumstances would have had them on different sides of the war effort, something most Americans may have never realized. Both nations entered the war as a matter of being attacked. For the Finns it became a point of mortal survival as the Soviets opportunistically took the start of the war as a chance to regain from Finland their independence, building a strategic buffer for Leningrad. The Soviets wasted no time, attacking Finland’s eastern border just 3 months into the world conflict; a move that would have The Soviet Union expelled from the League of Nations. It was a relatively short-lived, but bloody fight for survival for the massively-out-numbered, out-gunned Finns.

If both the Finnish and the American 49 year-olds were men, they likely would have served in the War effort, but in Finland, far more likely, and more likely in combat. Finland mobilized all it had on its eastern border to preserve itself from Soviet take over. Perhaps it’s why I inherently love biathlon. White uniformed soldiers on skis, saved Finland. They stopped the Soviet advance in the winter of 1939, holding onto all but 11% of what had been Finland prior to the Soviet advance. That piece of ceded Finland still hurts here. Mimmu’s grandfather fought on the front lines. Her grandma was from an area that is part of Russia still today. It still stings, long after the generation who fought for it has passed. The scars are still here.

The continued Soviet threat after 1940 left Finland with little choice but to adhere to an alliance with Nazi Germany, lest they be swallowed up and devoured into communist Soviet Union as a casualty of the war theater. Finland’s general Mannerheim’s deft maneuvering with Hitler helped Finland, in 1944, gain back some of its 1939 land losses at the hands of the Soviets with the help of the German army as they attacked the Soviets from Lapland. But at first chance when it was clear Germany could no longer truly threaten Finland any longer, Mannerheim turned the Finns on Germany in Lapland in 1945 as a clearly-defeated Germany retreated, burning every Lapp town and city in their wake. Finland didn’t suffer necessarily more than others, but the war has affected their sense of duty to each other that reaches beyond the generation that paid the most.

Both the American and Finnish 49 year-olds in 1971 would have lived through an economic depression, a world war as they started adulthood and formed their world view, a cold war of Soviet suspicion most of the rest of their lives, and an emergence of their country into modern world leaders in many areas of societal proficiency. They would most likely have passed by now, but I think both might be surprised to watch one from the other at present, as I am.

Finland watches a presidential debate that is beyond belief in pettiness. They watch a US president curry favor in their capital, openly, to one of the most dangerous, ruthless, shrewd, despots the KGB ever produced. They watch a US president tell a fascist, racist group of thugs stand back and stand by. It’s bewildering. It’s scary.

They say history repeats itself. I don’t totally buy that, but there’s a reason that notion exists from beyond our era. I think history mimics itself when lessons of past generations don’t stick to the next couple. Let’s call it generational drift, or, second-hand forgetfulness. I think that’s kind of the way things stay the same, beyond our personal lifetime experiences, even when so much else changes.

It’s hard to have a blog about living in Finland comparing it to the life in the US currently, without asking what taking one’s country back means; specifically from whom? If our huddled poor masses are now the scapegoat for America not being some notion of great, where then is the America of the statue of liberty? Greatness is indeed lost, but not where it’s being suggested.

As I’ve said, it feels safer to be here. It feels safer to speak your mind. It feels better to have my kids here right now. Some might think it would make me unequivocally giddy to be here. Some might think it opportunistic and unpatriotic. Many have asked if I’m just loving it here. The answer is quite simply, yes and no. I’m loving that my kids see their grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins they’ve seen precious little of in their lives. I love that they speak their language and are being the Finns they are by birthright. I like it because it provides a means to an end of what parenting and taking care of your family means as a father. But I am not giddy about the only thing every single one of us is on pins and needles about, no matter where you actually are in the world. I want to make that clear.

There are brinks. We’ve been on them before. Our experience with brinks and coming back from them seem to do with the collective aversion to historical experience with such brinksmanship. Whether it is the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Beer Hall Putsch, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the Bay of Pigs, humans have found a way to pull back from them, especially when such huge human cost has been paid. But here we all are…

Urging folks to vote isn’t enough. Urging folks to be decent to each other is a way bigger deal, and much more critical. Birthday well-wishes are a great reminder of that simple intent. If the United States could take one thing from Finland in the coming weeks, it’s that. Caring for each other isn’t bad. Health care for all isn’t communism, it’s decency. A mask isn’t about you, it’s about your neighbor. I’m not sure how we got there.

As we approach November 3rd and our ballots have long since been sent, I’m 49 years old and hunkered down with my family in relatively-safe country where caring for each other is still woven into the social fabric. Are we overreacting? You tell me.