I had a flash of lucidity last night, insight into life,
Norway and everything (thank you Douglas Adams).
If statistics are to be believed, despite being “the best
country in the world in which to live” 50% of Norway’s population will suffer
from “depression” and / or “anxiety”. That could be regarded as a pointless
piece of research since I reckon you can take any group of people anywhere and
they will all have different degrees of anxiety about aspects of life but
depression? What IS depression? I’m reluctant to give clinical psychiatric
diagnoses of life’s inevitable ups and downs,
I see countries as being like people. I know very unhappy
rich people and happy poor people. Maybe Norway’s apparent wealth has moved its
perspective somewhere “strange”. Norway WAS the poorest country in Europe until
oil was discovered there. Oil brought wealth and wealth brought ….. people who
like money? People who are motivated by the pursuit of money which was,
according to Jesus, the root of all evil? Not everyone can handle wealth.
Norway is undeniably pretty but Norwegians go for holidays
or even choose to live in countries from which economic migrants seek new lives
in Norway. Norwegians dream of the sun perhaps even seeing it as a cure for
their “depression” whilst people from sunnier climes dream of a car, an
apartment, healthcare, education for their kids in Norway even if their skills
are average.
I wondered years ago about the alleged Norwegian tendency
for depression as I have many years experience dealing with and reading about
the use of venlafaxine hydrochloride (a psychiatric nurse told me I knew more
about its contraindications than anyone she knew). I’m not in the medical
business at all but had a deep personal interest in knowing what the
implications venlafxine hydrochloride use and abuse might have on the life of
my Norwegian son. There is the simple theory that Norwegian DNA has a tendency
to be depressive because those Norwegians that weren’t depressed sailed away to
sunnier climes thousands of years ago and new DNA wasn’t attracted to Norway
until it became rich from oil, a pretty sad story really. Norway could be seen
as the poor kid who became popular when they won the lotto attracting the
“wrong kind of friends”.. It must be hard for any country or person to deal
with the reality of sudden wealth but I’m struck by the slippery nature of
wealth. Wealth needs “storing”, “protecting” and “tending”.
Everything is worth what you can get for it and trust is a
commodity that seems to be dwindling faster than the west’s access to rare
elements. When, for example, Norway “buys” Regent Street in London (or was it
Bond Street?) it trusts the property will, in real terms at least hold its
value (bearing in mind the migration of retailing to the internet, I’d have
thought owning the Hindi, Mandarin, Hispanic and Portuguese net domain
equivalents of “lastminute.com” or even “blogger.com” would have more potential
for growth).
There is no rule that having a lot of money is any
prophylactic against future poverty. The world is full of people who have found
their pensions didn’t buy them much in their old age since the west’s system of
banking and money creation means currencies are constantly devaluing and
inflation is a fact of life. If you are 18 years old now, you will sound like
your grand-parents one day saying “£8 for a loaf of bread? The world’s gone
mad”. Like a man smiling because his bowl has a few more grains of rice in it
than the previous day, can Norwegians ever learn to be happy simply because
it’s more fun deciding to be happy? Forget the money, the brand of clothes, the
version of smartphone you have, the car you drive … how happy has any of this
made you? … but if your concept of happiness has always been based on these
things, conceiving of “another kind of happiness” may be impossible. Norwegians
learning to be happy for no reason might be a good insurance policy for
Norway’s oil fund losing its value.
So, to try and pull all these threads together, did those in
Norway who were not depressed, who had the energy to leave, go with the Vikings
as far as Corsica or to the US to Minnesota etc. leaving a pool of DNA with
depressive tendencies behind? or, did the depressed leave, so fed up with the
Norwegian climate? The 500,000 or so foreigners living in Norway now, what
attracted them to Norway? Do they have any character traits that share common
threads of DNA? If they were motivated by money to come to Norway, has Norway
experienced its native depressive DNA being heavily mixed with “wealth seeking
DNA”? Does this create a “tendency towards happiness”?
It’s this dichotomy I can’t work out. … if Norway really is
“the best country in the world in which to live”, why ARE 50% of them depressed
and anxious? Is it because they have something to lose? Their wealth? The poor
have the luxury of an “happy-go-lucky-YOU-CAN’T-TAKE-IT-WITH-YOU” attitude and
can be wildly happy for tiny triumphs whilst the already wealthy or
hyper-ambitious need more substantial reasons to celebrate.
Personally, I don’t care where I am, what I’m doing or who
I’m doing it with as long as I’m happy. My life has already been a triumph
since I have a great son with whom I have a phenomenal relationship which will
withstand the trials of separation as I seek somewhere outside of Norway (probably
my native UK) where I will have permanent residency rights to grow old and
settle. I also have a great love in my life with a girl I met years ago. For
many good reasons we cannot be together but our love thrives despite the
distance or the lack of prospects of us ever being together as if the love has
its own life and owns us.
The Chinese say what you own eventually owns you and
Norway’s wealth seems to have taken some of its inhabitants down a material
cul-de-sac. Far better to be owned by a love that puts a smile on your face
every day for free than the nice car you only think you can afford because the
person who worked out the credit deal said you could.
Read “Thinking of Working Abroad?” by Warren Michael Davis.
It may well vaccinate you against any latent desire you may have to leave your
home town, nation, race, community and family to be a lone, lost soul fighting
a bureaucracy that was never designed with your interests as a priority.
Choose happiness!
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