The Hyggelig Journey

There was always a door. Not wide, not narrow — simply there, as doors tend to be. People filed through it in decent clothes and decent thoughts, offering each other smiles approved by custom and time. I watched from a few paces off, not out of defiance, but because something in me paused. They said I could enter, if I wished. It would only cost a nod, a small silence, a looking away. Nothing dramatic. Just enough to fit in. Just enough to be invited to the right tables and clapped on the back by the right hands. But there were others — figures without names, without ease, the sort who carry their whole lives in their eyes. They were not welcome. Not at that table. Not beyond that door. And I, for reasons I could never quite translate into speech, could not leave them behind. So I stayed outside. Not with banners, not with noise — only with presence. They say one must choose: to be included by excluding, or excluded by including. I made my peace with the latter. It is quiet...

There is, after all, a fine yet profound distinction between being human and being humane. The former is a matter of birth, a biological inevitability; the latter — a choice — deliberate, tremulous, and often inconvenient. To be human is to possess a body that breathes and falters, to be bound by hunger, weariness, and the quiet certainty of decay. But to be humane? Ah, that is another matter entirely. One may walk the earth for decades, fully human yet never truly humane. One may have hands yet never reach out, eyes yet never truly see, a voice yet never utter a word that eases another’s sorrow. It is not the mere fact of existence that dignifies a person, but the unseen, uncelebrated acts — the pause before judgement, the mercy given in silence, the refusal to let another soul slip unnoticed into despair. And how often do we mistake the two? How often do we believe that merely living is enough? That to feel pain is to understand it, when in truth, only those who have tran...

The patient entered, draped in their finest attire, as though fabric alone could mend the fractures time had inscribed upon the body. There was something deliberate in the way they carried themselves, an unspoken belief that dignity could be preserved through careful presentation. The pressed linen, the impeccable cut of the fabric, the way the collar sat just so — none of it was accidental. Their makeup — poised, restrained — was not vanity but a quiet act of defiance against the slow erosion of time. And when they spoke, their voice carried the measured cadence of a life spent selecting words with care. It was polished, deliberate, softened by the patience that only years can bestow. Yet beneath this cultivated poise, the body bore the weight of too many summers. It had known heat and fatigue, had stretched itself across decades, and had grown accustomed to carrying burdens both visible and unseen. A body that understood, without resistance, the quiet art of endurance. Th...