The Grass is Really Greener on the Other Side…of the World

They’ve told me I’m colour blind. Not every colour mind you, mainly just red and green. It has its advantages, however. Some studies have shown that colour blind people are better at seeing certain colour camouflages. Such findings apparently may give an evolutionary reason for the high prevalence of red-green colour blindness. So instead of seeing it as a disability, perhaps red-green colour blind people are actually more evolved than others!    

And even red-green colour blind people can of course see most reds and greens. Thankfully for the rest of the motoring world, I don’t have a problem seeing red traffic lights for example. And I certainly don’t have a problem seeing the green in the grass in Finland. The grass is really greener on the other side…of the world, that is. It’s amazingly green. It’s the green of children’s picture books and Kermit the Frog. It’s the type of green that has defined all other greens at the beginning of time. It’s so green, it makes you dizzy just looking at it; so dizzy in fact that you have to grab on to the grass, to keep from falling off the earth.

This is the first time in 20-years that we’ve visited Finland in summer. Having visited Finland a number of times in winter, one begins to think of Finland as a country of perpetually freezing weather. Snow covered countryside and iced-up lakes are of course beautiful and winter sports keep Nordic people healthy and active even in winter. In many ways a Nordic winter can be appealing. But it’s not for me. I’d rather see Kermit green than frosty white when I look out the window.

Having visited Finland only in winter in recent years, one forgets that summer comes to this northern country once a year as well. Every year. That’s every 12-months. And that’s not really a long time to wait for a summer that is so breathtaking, albeit brief. I’ve often said that Finnish summer is like Minna, short and beautiful. And talking about Minna, she had her birthday last week.We organised a bit of a party for her at her auntie’s holiday house. It was an ‘open door’ type of a day, with people coming and going all day.

While Minna is an only child, she has a huge extended family, probably only surpassed by Father Abraham himself. It was a joy to observe Minna mingle with her family that day. Her extended family were invited to come and celebrate Minna and come they did! In droves. Car after car pulled up to the yard as people came to celebrate their favourite Australian cousin and niece. While it was a joy to observe Minna mingle that day, it also brought home to me the sacrifice she has made to join me on the other side of the world.      

Minna has a way with wordplays and quirky and quick quips. In her mother tongue that is. This doesn’t convert as much into English. And that’s a sacrifice, because it’s a witty and beautiful side of Minna’s personality. She has also sacrificed her Finnish friendships and her otherwise close connection to her parents and her extended family. That’s a real sacrifice. It takes a special kind of person to do that.

As my mother-in-law and I dropped off Minna and Samuel at the airport the other day to fly back to Australia, I once again got that sinking feeling that migrants know all so well. I didn’t feel it for myself, since it won’t be long and I’ll see them again, but for my mother-in-law, who doesn’t know when she’ll see her only child again. I mumbled a few poorly chosen words about the difficulties of saying goodbye, to which she quipped in her quintessentially pragmatic Finnish way, ‘There are as many “hellos” as there are “goodbyes.”’ Which of course is true. You got to love the Finns for being able to articulate the dead obvious, but in a profound kind of way. Minna is her mum’s daughter!

Being able to immerse oneself in two cultures is of course one of the blessings of being a migrant. One doesn’t get any tourist brochure glossy pictures of life in either country. A friend of mine I hadn’t seen in 20-years said to me recently that he wished he could simply drop everything and move to the other side of the world – like Australia. The grass is always greener and all that. As a migrant, however, you know that reality is different and while the actual grass might be greener in Finland for a fleeting moment every summer, the daily grind meets and greets us wherever we live. It’s a type of colour blindness that migrants develop fairly early on in their lives.

So the secret to happiness isn’t about moving to the other side of the world, but to be truly present wherever we are. I’ve been reading Tuesdays With Morrie that came highly recommended by a good friend of mine. In it, Morrie, an old professor shares his wisdom with Mitch, one of his old students, as Morrie’s body slowly succumbs to a debilitating illness.

When Mitch asked why he had never moved somewhere else when he was younger, where things would have been better, Morrie replied, ‘Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our short-sightedness. We don’t see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you’re surrounded by people who say “I want mine now,” you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising and stealing it.’

As I read Morrie’s words, I couldn’t help but think of the plight of so many refugees who see countries such as Australia and Finland as places where the grass is truly greener. And for them it really is. And I couldn’t help but think of our well-to-do societies being hysterical over losing ‘what is ours’ and hence needing a military to keep us safe from the encroaching boat people army. Yes, under the recently introduced Australian laws, the boats will probably stop and that will mean that people won’t drown – in our waters. But they’ll drown somewhere else, or they’ll be shot somewhere else, or they’ll die of hunger somewhere else. But at least it won’t be in our backyard.

But I’ll let Morrie continue with his wisdom. ‘The problem, Mitch, is that we don’t believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family, the way we care about our own.’ Perhaps we could even see boat people as, well…people. Because they are not actually ‘boat people.’ Just people. On boats.