“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 958 (Monday) –bonus lesson

Near the end of tonight’s Finnish class, we were introduced to the word for “to love” (rakastaa) and some cultural context around its usage. It’s changing for the younger generations, but apparently, saying “I love you” for the older generations of Finns is rare. Hugging, for the older generations is also kind of rare and awkward, and classmates shared stories of their parents and some comical hug situations.

It was like a lightbulb exploded in my head. This explained most of my childhood. When I was growing up, we were not the kind of family to be hugging and tossing out an “I love you” on the way out the door. Or hardly ever. It didn’t mean we didn’t love each other, just that we didn’t vocalize or demonstrate it as a regular thing. 

I remember being at a friend’s home in junior high school, and as we were preparing to leave to go somewhere, each of her parents gave her a hug, said “I love you.” We weren’t going off to Canada for a week, we were going to a school thing and would back in a couple hours. I observed the goodbyes then and many more times afterward, always wondering what the heck kind of freaky, sappy, weirdo nonsense it was. The affectionate goodbye thing was a completely foreign concept to me. 

In my 20s I was stunned the first time my brother hugged me and tossed an “I love you” on his way out the door. The family eventually climbed on board the hugging and “I love you” wagon, probably thanks to the friends we brought home who would hug my parents, and now it is a regular thing for us.

Tonight, in class, I learned that the absence of hugging and saying “I love you” is a very Finnish thing, at least with the older generations. Clearly it came through from Mummu’s upbringing and that of her parents and all the generations before them.

I never expected my language class to have the added bonus of a free therapeutic breakthrough, but that nugget of information has been illuminating.