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...

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.