Finnish Him!

Today we’re talking about Finland.

Finland is so hot right now! Number one in education, chock-full of beautiful, athletic people, close to the top of the Happiness Index, boatloads of reindeer, world-class infrastructure, dominant in all those economic/health/quality of life categories; the Finns are absolutely crushin’ it.

How do they do it? What are their secrets? 

Finland is just crushin’ it these days! Flag via CIA Factbook, so don’t do anything weird with it.

This of course should be at the top of every U.S. politician’s agenda (figuring out how to co-opt things and ideas from other countries in a way that is beneficial to us) but it’s not easy to admit when you’ve been outhustled, outmaneuvered and outcoached. The truth is, we’re being out-America’d.

It’s time to put the pride aside America. Time to head to Helsinki, flat-billed MLB hats in hand, and say, “Alright, how’d you do it?” Better we do this now as opposed to a Kent Brockman-esque welcoming of our new Finnish overlords in 2085. “Hail, Finns!”

Fjords

They're just so smug...

Been thinking a lot about fjords lately. The envy of the geological world, these rivers that have fjørmed from glaciers doing their thing are beautiful, but man do they know it.

Apparently, fjords have such cache that other slightly uglier geological formations around the world have been trying to pass themselves off as fjords when in reality they’re really only rias, or in some cases, just a river with some high ground on either side.

Sadly, geological puffery + insecurity is nothing new. I once visited this place in Alabama that promoted itself as one of the world’s most wondrous, vast cave systems. The “vast cave system” ended up being about 300 sq ft of dank, charmless cave, with a cheesy laser light show for added effect.

Ah, how these insecure geological formations are so like us… There’s this crippling fear that somehow we’re not good enough. We’re terrified to just be ourselves so we act like someone else, install laser light shows and generally try to portray ourselves as something we’re not. We spend our lives trying to be more fjord-like instead of just embracing being a canal.

From youth, we erroneously tend to see others around us as superior, impervious fjord-men and women who got it going on. Well I got news for you, all the fjords and the beautiful people got problems just like everyone else. As cool as they may look, you better believe those fjords are sweating over global warming.

So today if you’re a muddy stream surrounded by landfills on both sides, wear it proud and don’t worry about trying to be a fjord. Let them do their thing and you do yours.

You’re better than you give yourself credit for.

And the last thing those smug fjords need is another reason to feed that ego.