Strength is not the lack of fear but the presence of Kindness

I’ll be honest. I spent a long time being all nervous about what I would write my first chief editor’s note about. Obviously, this is very important, if you believe that a chief editor’s note is what sets the tone for an issue, and…this is the first issue of the semester, so first impressions and all that jazz apply. Yes, choosing a topic is nothing but a daunting task. If only because there are so many important issues I could talk about. I cannot even open a paper or check out a news outlet without seeing some urgent issue that needs and deserves as much space and voices to stand behind them as possible. And as if that isn’t scary and nerve-wracking in itself, somehow, I am supposed to say something worth publishing. So, that…is what it is.

It has been a long and trying year. It has, in fact, been such a long year, I sometimes still think it’s just a bad dream we’ll all collectively wake up from soon. Yet time has muddled on, we’ve binged more series than we’d care to admit and most of our lives have been limited and altered in ways that push us into an uncomfortable stillness. We are smack in the middle of a pandemic that has reached biblical proportions and it is harder and harder to fool ourselves into thinking it will be something that will pass by quick. The notion of ‘just hold on a couple months more’ is starting to seem like a hail-Mary most of us whisper to ourselves, when reality just starts to seem like a bad dystopian novel. The strain left by social isolation in the spring and summer still weights heavy, and the precautions of distanced-learning and distanced-working, the underlying anxiety of being in public, all combined with the possibility that it seems like we as responsible people, might have to do it all over again…just feels terribly hopeless and lonely. And it’s not as if the pandemic is the only thing we’ve got to keep an eye on. No, no, 2020 has been like a bag of shiny marbles all dropped on a whim, and we’ve been left to run around frantically trying to catch them all before they roll into the metaphorical crevice that is the space between the fridge and wall that we really cannot shimmy our arm into no matter how hard we try. Wildfires, recession, crimes against humanity, so many massive storms we cannot even give them cute names anymore, floods, outrage, injustice…all these marbles and not enough hands to catch them it seems. And at times it feels like the people with the power to move that fridge out of the way just don’t feel like doing it...and to be quite frank, it just doesn’t seem to make any Goddamn sense.

So that’s where we’re at. I’m not going to lie, it’s a little bit too much doom and gloom to my liking. With that being said, I finally decided what to write about. The dragon and the knight.

And kindness in the fight.

I cry. I cry a lot. See, there we go, my first Chief Editor’s note is also a confessional, what can I say? –It’s my style. Insurance commercials, interviews, most movies, and those godawful moments that seem like any other, but they’re not because you feel that squeeze in the pit of your stomach, as you realize you’ve not heard your best friend laugh in months (except, of course, through a telephone or computer screen), you’ve not held the hand of someone you love, not casually brushed against another human being…Yeah, at that point you crack open a bottle of your preferred poison, be it wine or fancy juice box, and take to the bath with some Celine Dion as the soundtrack to your personal hellscape. And when that happens enough times, I’m afraid to say…It stops taking the edge off of being so still, so isolated, so deprived of social contact, the little things we’ve all taken for granted. It’s just not realistic to expect for us to get by alone. And yet, we’re all told to be independent and strong and have thick skins and just keep trying our best until…until what? I don’t know, I’ve never gotten so far myself. But we’ve all supposedly got to be the brave knights in shining armour of our own lives, charging into every battle with our pointy swords held high. Well, I’m still in the process of just trying to figure out how to put that armour on. In addition to that, I have a hard time looking at a dragon and seeing a dangerous fire breathing beast instead of a curious creature with wings and speed. And I’ve found myself on multiple occasions ranting to a friend or relative about how I don’t understand why in any given situation something malicious would happen, why a dragon might swoop down from the sky with fangs and claws chomping and shredding, when I’ve tried my best to be kind and mindful not to go poking around the dragon’s lair. Yet every single time I find the most common answer to be a slap across the face –“You’ve got to stop being so soft. You need to toughen up. You can’t expect people to be nice, let alone dragons…The world’s a harsh place, get some thicker skin.”

Well, even if it is just a verbal slap across the face, let me say that I’d rather turn another cheek than agree with that philosophy. What in the world do we gain by all of us acting like jerks just to avoid seeming too soft…or God forbid, admitting that we cannot do it all alone and that it might be nice to have the dragon say hello? Nothing, we’ll just be jerks among jerks walking the earth all suffering in silence. Rigid soldiers clanking along our way in armour that chafes, and dragons incinerating everything in sight out of sheer pain, all too preoccupied with defense as offence to catch any of those marbles or to move any fridges out of the way.

So, kindness.

In kindness there is this terrifying notion, one that I’ve ran across too many times in the course of my life, of it being perceived as weakness. The idea behind this being something along the lines of “you’ve got to toughen up to make it in this life”. Of course, this builds on to the notion of “Life’s not fair”. Though, I don’t quite agree with that philosophy either. It seems like the kind that will topple down eventually. In fact, I think we’ve got it all upside-down; it takes a lot more strength to be kind than cold. It’s a show of bravery to stay open and to let yourself feel all that can be felt, to share and care, to pick up the phone and call a friend who usually calls you but has been a bit quiet lately, to shoot someone a smile for no particular reason, to simply lend an ear. Those things that might take a toll on us, might be the actions that keep someone else from falling on their own sword. Those are the bravest things a person can do. There’s another misconception about kindness too; the saying that ‘kindness costs nothing’ I don’t believe that to be entirely true. Only because kindness, it requires you to put down your sword, to loosen those impenetrable slabs of metal around your chest. It requires you to put your heart in a place where it counts, in a place where it’s on the front line.

To be clear, this is not to say a knight should not take care of herself; one should always be kind to oneself too. And that includes knowing which battles to pick and choose. So, I leave you with a few more words from me to you:

It’s okay not to charge into battle. It’s okay not to slay every dragon.

It’s okay to be tired and weary of dragging a shield over you and others,

you and your choice of weapons under the covers.

It’s okay to reach out and not to bite the hand that reaches back with a gift.

There’s no weakness in caring enough to ask if the beast is doing alright,

and be glad if it is.

And the dragon need not spit its fire for some light,

in the pitch-dark cave where it sits day and night.

If you decide to lay down your armor, and call for ceasefire you’ll find,

That, dragons,

they love to stargaze just as much as knights.

If the night sky doesn’t look clear tonight, and the stars aren’t feeling like putting on a show, that’s ok, because we’ve got an issue full of gems that will suit both dragon and knight alike! We’ve got poetry by yours truly, fabulous short stories that will both leave you wanting more by Tony and Sini, thinking thoughts about social media deprivation and self-consciousness by Leo and Annika, two absolutely thought provoking literature articles by Eeva and Miia, and last but not least a snapshot of this year’s fresher’s experience with Henna’s interview “Freshers of the Apocalypse” and Robi’s freshers diary!

I leave you to enjoy the sparkle…

Artwork by Satu Ikäheimo.