The Hyggelig Journey

Gustav Klimt once said, “Art is a line around your thoughts.” A line — thin as a whisper, trembling yet deliberate — emerges from nothingness. It does not impose itself. It does not command. It is barely there, yet it holds. It is the first breath of form, the fragile boundary between the unsaid and the spoken. Without it, thought is a flicker in the dark, a thing half-lived, dissolving before it can be known. A vision stirs. Not summoned, not controlled. It arrives unbidden — whole yet veiled, elusive yet certain. It lingers at the edge of perception, pressing gently, insistently, against the mind’s quiet. It cannot be seized outright. To reach for it is to risk shattering it; to hesitate is to watch it dissolve. And so, the line must be drawn. But not too soon. Not too rigidly. It must breathe, as thought itself breathes, as meaning unfolds. The hand moves, uncertain yet assured, guided by something beyond logic. An intelligence older than language, something that knows ...

As a writer, one thing that has always caught my attention is the remarkable adaptability of the Brazilian Portuguese language. It is highly versatile — elastic to the point of facilitating the expression of complex thoughts and emotions in both speech and writing. But there is one word that many people tend to avoid, either because they feel it is too strong or because they want to suggest that what they feel is not quite so intense. Time and again, I have seen patients arrive fuming with anger over their daily struggles, yet when confronted, they deny feeling angry. They describe it as something else — indignation, frustration, irritation, annoyance, resentment — when, in reality, they are simply angry. This is partly due to the process of rationalisation, where we seek explanations to make sense of our thoughts and emotions. However, anger is anger. It is not healthy to ignore an emotion that exists precisely to drive adjustments in our daily lives, pushing us to tac...

Whether we feel joy, sadness, anger, fear, envy, or rage, we cannot help but share our emotions with those around us. Even when we remain silent, we are wired to express our feelings through our faces, body language, and behaviour. Emotions enable people of all kinds to communicate, regardless of what they say — or choose not to say. It is no coincidence that this has been the primary reason for our survival across generations, and it will remain the single most decisive factor in humanity’s long-term success or failure. There is an inherent responsibility in being human—to strive for greater compassion towards one another. Perhaps no force shapes the human experience more than our ability to understand and harness emotion within the social fabric, using it as a tool for fraternity and mutual cooperation.