The sun

It is difficult to explain the happiness you feel when you finally see the sun in Denmark, if you haven't experienced it personally. Danes go bonkers in the spring when the sun arrives. One guy even told me that it is ok to stop working and go for a bit of sunbathing. That is huge, coming from a Dane and their high working ethics. That happened last year at the end of March, it was the first sunny day after a long winter. Last year I found it funny, but this year I don't anymore, because I lived through the Danish fall and winter and they are hard, but that is difficult to imagine. You must go through it at least once. And it isn't because of the short days, it is because of the lack of sun. On the winter solstice, there is 7 hours of daylight, which is an hour and a half less then what I am used to. Day in Zagreb lasts for 8 and a half hours on winter solstice. But the sun went away last year with the first day of September and it didn't return until middle March. It was worst at the beginning. I remember I called my old neighbor on 20th of October and told her: "Can you believe, today is the first day after the beginning of September that I actually saw the sun?" There wasn't one day with any sun for a month and a half. It was horrible! It was just gray, grey and gray and rainy and grey without end. It was like living under a boring, uniformly grey cloud. No wonder that in Danish language the word "sky" means cloud. That really gets to you, but it creeps in slowly, you don't even notice it. One day, while I was raiding home from work, I caught myself thinking: "Can't these clouds go away just for one day? Why does it have to be cloudy all the time?"

And I was going like that from day to day and my mood kept getting worse and my back started to hurt more and more. Until I started having really depressing thoughts. At that point I started drinking vitamin D and through two weeks it got better. Vitamin D took the edge of.

This type of depression is different to the depression that you get when life smacks you on the head. It is a bit tricky to describe. I was happy with the way my life was going and still am but there was constantly some heaviness that was creeping in from somewhere and I couldn't pinpoint where does it stem from. When I started taking vitamin D, it became easier. The heaviness vanished and the only thing that stayed was the longing for the sun. And that went away in the middle of March when the sun returned after a long winter slumber.

The other day I was talking to my girlfriends father about it and he told me the story where it hit him especially hard. He is working as an electrician and one winter they were working in the basement of a building. The thing was that when they entered the basement, they had to walk a long way in order to reach their workplace. The walk was so long that for the lunch break, they didn't go outside but they just had it in the basement. He worked through winter like this. He hadn't seen the sun in months because he would arrive to work in the morning, before the sunrise, spend the daytime in the basement and go home at night. That year he said was awful. It got him so hard, he was barely able to get up in the morning and get going. After work he was worth nothing. He was only capable of staring at the TV and nothing more.

So, the lack of sun during wintertime is a serious issue in Denmark and the only thing that can offset it a bit is vitamin D. And trust me, the fact that quarantine went into effect at the same time the sun returned to Denmark, is a proper little tragedy. Now that the sun is out, few people can enjoy it. I think that will hit a lot of people hard. The worst case scenario would be that quarantine rules are in effect while the sun is up and that they lift when the sun retires behind the clouds in the fall. That would be a serious problem indeed, let us hope it will not come to that.

Loneliness

Stand together by being apart. That is the promotional statement by which Denmark is trying to promote social distancing. But the more time passes the more skeptical I am becoming about how long can that actually be upheld. Because it is going against one fundamental human instinct and that is sociability. We are social animals and that is a fact. If you look back way into the past, way back before modern society, early civilizations, even before agriculture, humans lived in small groups with up to approximately 150 people. So, I guess it is safe to say, metaphorically, that being social is written into our DNA. And today we are being asked not to do it. Today, when we took our social instincts to unprecedented levels, where approximately 55% of human population lives in cities we are asked not to hang out with others. The reasons are completely justified, I do not doubt that for a second. I am just wondering how long we can keep it up? Asking people to do social distancing is not so far away from asking a fish not to swim.

This line of thought started yesterday when my girlfriends sister dropped by. It was the first human I have seen, other then my girlfriend in weeks, if I don't count work and public transport. And I can feel that it is getting to me and my social needs are low. I am an introvert who is perfectly happy with socializing one or two times per week, three times is pushing it and four times is too much. If I am starting to feel it, I can only imagine how difficult it must be for people with higher social needs than mine. Yesterday I talked to a friend who has higher social needs than I do. He told me that when it gets to him, he goes to company offices to have a cup of coffee, but that just gets the edge off. He is having a hard time not hanging out with people.

At least gamers have it easier. We know there are social spaces that are perfectly safe and quarantine approved, where we can be social and where we can play in big groups without breaching the quarantine. I do find it a bit ironic. Until my mid twenties, I would often hear from non gamers: how can you do it, you are just staring in that screen all day, you are wasting your life away etc, etc. Do I need to mention that most of the people at that time were watching television in the same amount I spent gaming? Well, now I am the responsible citizen. So, if you want to hang out with me and be socially responsible, you can find me on Azeroth.

I made a little digression... Let us go back to "real" socializing. How long can you ask born socialites not to socialize? I would say not much longer. And you can slowly tell. Last Friday when I went out to throw the trash, main street in Roskilde was decently full of people. There wasn't as many of them as before the quarantine times but noticeably more. Weather is beautiful, quarantine is up for some time now, of course that people started to slowly give up on it. They just can't take it any more. And people from Scandinavia are good at following rules and regulations and they trust in their governments. So when they are slowly starting to give in, you know it has been a bit too long.

But as societies slowly start to reopen, one problem will still remain, at least in Denmark. Ban on public gatherings for 10 or more people will stay at least until August. So we will be able to see our friends and family but all fun will be put on hold. So we will be able to work and be home and see people one by one but no fun? How long will that last? We are not machines that can just work, work, work. Even Danes need recreational activities from time to time. Their amazing working ethics is necessarily standing in stark contrast to hygge. They will kill themselves working but when they are of, they are off. With a ban on public gatherings way into August will severely restrict their possibilities to be off. In the old Rome it was known that if you want to win public approval you need to provide bread and circus "Panem et circenses". By the time this whole corona thing is over, a lot of people will lose their bread and circuses will remain closed until further notice. We do not have a lot to look forward to, until the end of summer. Work if you are lucky and... nothing, no fun until corona is done and dusted and that can take a while.