The Hyggelig Journey

I once asked a friend why he’d caused such a scene at a wedding — there’d been raised voices, a shattered glass, and an impromptu dance in the midst of someone’s speech. All rather out of character for a man usually so measured. His response caught me off guard. He gave a small shrug, his gaze drifting somewhere beyond the present, and said, quite plainly, — It was one of those things, you know? As if that were explanation enough. As if certain disturbances belonged to a category all their own — needing neither justification nor regret. I said nothing. There was, I sensed, a quiet truth in his words. Sometimes life swells beneath the surface, and when it finds no proper channel, it bursts forth — in laughter, in tears, in chaos — at a wedding, or on some otherwise forgettable Tuesday.

All too often, we encounter situations that provoke fear or disgust, and instead of responding with thoughtfulness, we instinctively swing to the opposite extreme. Rather than pausing to understand the underlying issues or approaching them with balance, we react impulsively, believing that distancing ourselves as much as possible is the safest course of action. Ironically, this approach often leads us straight into the very situation we were trying to avoid — only in a slightly altered form. In our attempt to escape one perceived danger, we blindly run into another, failing to realise that both are merely different sides of the same coin. Take, for example, the way people react to financial hardship. Many witness others struggling under the weight of debt, losing their assets, or even facing bankruptcy. The sight of such instability fuels their determination to avoid the same fate, leading them to adopt an extreme approach to financial security. They dedicate themselves obs...