As a grown-up you can still play, I like to play the game where in I regularly look into myself and see what all these years living in an other country do to me. Sounds boring? It probably is for a lot of people, but it is something I like to do. I like to look in the mirror at other things to, but since I live in Norway now for fourteen year, this seems to be and interesting angle.

I had several reasons why I wanted to move to an other country, and why I went to Norway. The main reason is different depending on who I talk to. One of my problems was that my future was not there, and I don’t mean there as in there in the Netherlands but it was just not there. Up to that point I did things that came on my path, the Marines, studying, learning a trade stuff like that. But around the age of…34…Jezus Ch… did I wo(a)ndered around that long? Well anyway, I guess it took me that long to realize that I never have taken it serious what to to with my life. The problem is that thinking like that doesn’t really fit with my philosophy. Moving to Norway looked like a big plan into the future, but honestly it was just a way out, it was after all a big plan.

The other important reason for why I left was my discontent with the Dutch society at that moment. I’ve seen some thing and lived in poor countries where life is much harder than the life I have ever led. For the same reason why I think about living for so many years in an other country I also think about why…why where those people in Cambodia seemingly more exited by the new prospects they had, coming from a place where there is nothing and probably never will be. Compared to all the complaining and specifically the hatred towards other people and strangers. So afraid of the future and the things they might loose or never get. I just didn’t know what to do with the knowledge that one in five people I met on the street or within the group of people I knew, voted for a party that, if it where 1932 Germany, would lead them at the road to the concentration camps.

And I know that things will probably not go that way, but if you study history and try to look and understand how politics was perceived in those day’s, you will find that many normal people had understandable reasons for why they voted, for instance, for the Nazis not knowing that they slowly went along with the more extremist standpoint that where preached louder and louder. Even if no one in Holland wants to be a Nazi or will become one in the foreseeable future, the fact that you hop on the yrain that might lead that way is alarming enough for me. That’s why I also left to Norway, to escape the confrontation with these people, who were sometimes my friends and or colleagues.

Why did I Thought about this today? Two reasons. First I found this Haiku from Day 811.

The land behind me

a haze waning in the past

clearing the future.

Secondly, I listened by accident to the radio today and I understand that a certain party is getting bigger here in Norway that I might not like. I purposelessly don’t integrate here in Norway insofar the politics go. I am helped by the fact that most Norwegians don’t talk about, in the Netherlands everybody does…well almost.

I don’t know why I have such a problem with it. Most people I know condemn these parties and devastating ideologies, but somehow they don’t feel the urge to migrate to an other country. I have asked them how they do it but I have never gotten a satisfying answer. I guess my kindergarten teacher was right, I asked way to mush questions, I had to stand in the corner…and don’t look at the group.