Just say "no"... But smile!

"Can I help you with something?"

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 "No thanks I'll just look around..."

Right about now seems to be the time when everyone is reflecting on the changes they went through during the past year and how they wish to develop as the next one goes by. I've never been one to take this seriously in any way and by no means do I intend to commence a dour soliloquy about some spiritual journey I've been on, but something quite delightful happened today that made me realize that I am actually a bit different in comparison to the 2015 Me. To even associate this particular topic with the entire year of 2015 is misleading. For obvious reasons a substantial majority of the differences between me now and a year ago are due to the few months that have just recently been crossed off in our calendars. 

So what happened today? I was in the bookstore buying a calendar (above in the picture, I'm loving it) when a sales assistant came to talk to me. In the very beginning of this post is an example of how the conversation would've gone a few months back. This is pretty much how it went today:

"Can I help you?"

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"No thanks, I'll just look around a bit."

*SMILE*

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"OK, just tell me if you need anything."

*SMILE*

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"Thank you very much. It's always a struggle deciding which calendar to buy, right?"

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"I know! You're gonna have to look at it for an entire year, it's no joke."

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And then we both laughed.

That's seriously the smallest thing ever but it took nothing more than that to be put in a great mood for the rest of the day. I just thought: "That's a first time I've done that in Finland" and realized how normal that feels after being away for three months.

Now that I've been back in Finland for a good amount of time, I can tell how living in London has affected me. Before I left, I never considered it strange when people bump in to each other on the street and don't apologise. Bus drivers rarely smile and having to small talk with a stranger seems to be a situation that creates general discomfort among this northern folk. I don't want this to sound like I'm just picking out everything that's wrong with the people here - it's not a flaw, just something that's normal around here and different somewhere else. 

On my way to school in London there's a café I walk past every morning. And every morning there are people who deliver supplies to the café to get the day started. The first few days (or weeks) when they wished me good morning and asked me how my day was going so far, I felt a bit uneasy due to this "unnecessary" expression of kindness and the idea of walking on the other side of the street seemed tempting. Then something changed and I don't even know when. Suddenly their friendly faces made me cheerful instead of baffled and not answering to their kind words stopped being an option.

When I walk the streets of Helsinki, saying "sorry" and smiling when I accidentally dash against someone seems to put me in a strange light in the eyes of my fellow Finns. Sometimes I get a mean glance for being in their way and a confused one when I actually demonstrate an act of benevolence saying sorry, but it's something that just comes naturally now. Never did I realize before how unordinary it actually is around here. 

I still want to emphasize how there's nothing wrong with being a bit grumpy like many people - not everyone - are in Finland. It has just been fun to actually notice the differences between these two countries as I used to think there wasn't much of a cultural divergence. No matter what I love both Finland and England and It'll be fun to see how I've changed after the next three months.

Satu