Trust
Arriving at the airport in Helsinki was similar to our residence permit process in Shanghai. There were very few people, and the process of getting through customs was remarkably fast and simple.
When we went to complete our residence permit applications at the Finnish Consulate in Shanghai, the only visible security was that you had to be buzzed into the office. There were no armed guards, no checking of bags, no metal detectors to walk through. This was unlike our previous trips to the US Consulate in Shanghai where laptops cannot be taken in at all, and phones and any other items they might deem dangerous are taken at the door. The US Consulate also normally has a long line of people waiting for interviews or to conduct similar business, and an appointment is required. At the Finnish Consulate, no appointment is required. When we arrived, there were two other people inside the office, and they were finished with their business not long after we arrived, leaving us the whole office to ourselves for much of the 90 minutes we were there. While at the office, I breastfed Alaya and changed her diaper like we were at a friend’s home. It was quite the change of pace.
In Helsinki, we walked from our arrival gate to customs, where met a short line of people. In just a few minutes, it was our turn to face the men behind the glass. We gave them our passports and residence permits. Another couple minutes later, they returned them to us along with a paper about the COVID-19 situation, and we were on our way. After grabbing our luggage, we were out of the airport not even 5 minutes later.
Bochuan and I looked at each other, “Was that it?”
Because we were traveling from a low-risk country, we neither had to complete COVID tests nor self-quarantine. We were free to move about the country. That said, if we did have to complete tests or quarantine, we weren’t entirely sure who would have enforced that. Of course, we would have done it, but it seemed that the government was relying on people to “do the right thing.”
This was seen again when we took the commuter train to the railway station. To get on the train in Helsinki, you can buy tickets on the platform from a machine. There’s no one there to ensure that you do this, and when we got on the train, no one checked whether we had bought a ticket. This happened again on the railway to Lappeenranta. On the railway, we could see that there were train conductors, and I did see them check some people’s ticket, but it happened again that ours were never checked.
It wasn't until Bochuan remarked how nice it was to be able to take a railway train to another city without having to go through security, that I noticed we hadn't had to go through a security check to board the train as would have been required in China (as well as many other countries). Ultimately, one of our first impressions of the country was that it trusted its citizens.
There are many more examples of this that I won’t list here, but I think it would be easy to take advantage of the system, and people are just trusting you not to. It makes me want to hold myself to even higher standards of integrity.
Patience (or Persistence)
Another observation relates to patience or persistence. I have never encountered such a patient, helpful group of people. Now, of course, that’s a generalization, and I’m sure that the people we’ve encountered in Finland have moments of impatience just like the rest of us. But my constant impression is, “Wow, you haven’t given up already?”
For instance, when we first arrived, we made the absolute rookie mistake of not having one single adapter to allow us to charge our smart devices, plug in our router, or do all the myriad other things for which you need electricity. As such, we went out to the store in search of one. The first place we went to, they didn’t have any. However, the person helping Bochuan didn’t stop at “No, we don’t sell that.” She thought about it and then suggested another place he might find the adapter. At place 2, the same thing happened. The person first checked if they had adapters in the store, then checked with a colleague, and when it was clear he didn’t have the adapters we needed, he gave serious consideration to where we could find it. We hit the jackpot at place 3. Now, you might think that’s not patience, that’s just good customer service, but I have too many examples.
At yet another store, I tried to use some Finnish to ask someone if the store had curtains. She responded with “Excuse me?” in Finnish. I tried again, she was still unsure what I was saying. I tried English, and that didn’t work either. At this point, I said “Thank you” in Finnish and tried to gracefully leave what was becoming an awkward interaction, with curious looks from others in store, probably wondering, “Does she need help?” But the woman I was speaking to, just stepped closer and repeated “Excuse me?” It was clear to me that she was going to wait until I made myself clear. At this point, I realized I had a smart phone, and I typed curtains into Google Translate and showed her the Finnish. She said in English, “O.K.” and showed me to the curtains. Then she went on her way. She didn’t seem at all bothered by how long it took us to communicate or at all uncomfortable or annoyed. She acted as though the encounter wasn’t super awkward, moderately embarrassing, and very uncomfortable (for me anyway). It helped me to see that I was the one making the situation awkward by viewing needing help and not being able to speak Finnish yet as something shameful.
Then there was the elderly woman who got on the bus and asked the bus driver a question, then another question, then another question, and the driver sat at the bus stop, with the door open, answering all the woman’s questions as though he had nowhere else in the world to be. She then started moving into the bus, and he kept waiting for her to take a seat. Before sitting down, she realized she had another question, so she went back and asked. And the conversation continued until she was satisfied. Then, and only after she was seated, did the bus continue on its route. It's not just elderly ladies the bus drivers wait will wait on to take a seat. I've had bus drivers do it for me, even when I'm not with Alaya. But back to the woman's multiple questions. I would never have had the courage to “take up that much space” or “use so much of people’s time.” In that situation, I would have felt that I was taking up the driver's time and everyone else's on that bus. I have been trained to make myself as small as possible, as little burden as possible, and as quiet as possible. Whenever I don't do that, I've been trained to feel discomfort about it. However, this elderly woman and bus driver didn’t seem at all concerned about how the conversation might impact anyone else on the bus. In fact, the whole city didn’t seem to be in a great rush at all. Again, this feeling of patience emanated the space. I noticed the sense of rushing to arrive in my own mental state and took a deep breath in that moment and tried to enjoy the bus ride.
Of course, my favorite example relates to our meeting with Immigration Services. One day we went to their physical location, but we weren’t sure we were in the right place. So, we asked at the reception desk, and the guy there didn’t speak much English. Bochuan seemed to splutter a bit about how to communicate his question, and I racked my brain for some Finnish phrase that might work, but the man didn’t seem perturbed at all. He just made the international “give me a moment” signal, and a few minutes later a colleague appeared who could speak more English. We explained to her what we needed, and she said we were in the right place, but due to COVID, the person who normally handles these services is not here. She asked if we had made an appointment, we said “No.” At this point, she invited us inside.
Wait, what? Isn’t this the point where you turn us away and tell us to go figure out how to make an appointment? I cannot express enough how confused I was at being invited inside after being told that the person we needed wasn’t there and saying we didn’t have an appointment.
She asked us to have a seat and wait a moment. So, we did. She talked to a few colleagues, disappeared into a room, and then a few minutes later came back out with a number. She said we should call this number between 10 and 12 Monday through Thursday to make an appointment. I was again amazed that this woman went and figured out what we needed to do on our behalf.
Now, it happened to be a Monday between those hours, so we called the number on the paper, but no one answered. We listened to the message that played in both Finnish and English, and then we hung up. Bochuan asked me, “Was I supposed to leave a message,” but I didn’t have an answer. We decided to go to lunch and try again later.
While we were waiting in line to order our lunch, Bochuan gets a call back.
Wait, what? We hadn’t left a message, and we weren’t accustomed to people at these kinds of offices calling us back. We were then able to schedule an online appointment at a time convenient for us to discuss all the questions we had about moving to Finland.
If you’re not impressed by this point, wait for it.
During this 45-minute conversation, this person helped us to look at an email we’d received in Finnish about Alaya’s daycare place. She then helped us navigate the links in the email using screenshare, and when we hit a roadblock, she said, “I can call them for you.” In fact, she tried calling in that moment, but no one answered. So, she said she’d try again later after the meeting, and if she couldn’t reach anyone that day, she’d have an answer by the next day.
We then asked her a lot of questions about finding employment, social benefits, networking, registering our residence in Finland, and so on. What she could tell us, she did. What she didn’t know, she would send us links for or make phone calls about. The next morning, we had answers to our most pressing questions and links to topics we needed to follow-up on with the added note that if we got stuck, we could schedule another appointment with her, and she would walk us through the steps.
Can you imagine a place in which you could schedule a meeting with someone who would help you fill out forms, like those for getting social benefits or setting your status as a job seeker?
It was mind-boggling to me. I have many more examples, but I won’t bore you with all the moments when I expected someone to stop trying to help but they didn’t. They did absolutely everything they could do to solve whatever problem you presented using whatever language skills they had available. In most cases, the Finns we encountered had more than enough English to help us. And if they didn’t, they quickly found someone who did.
Compassion
I think the two observations of trust and patience really relate to compassion. When I’ve previously thought of compassion, I have associated it with the word “mercy.” However, mercy is more related to showing kindness towards someone who has done something wrong or worthy of punishment. It’s interesting to me that I have associated compassion with mercy because I think it underlies the subconscious belief I have that my very existence is a problem, and when someone is kind to me, it should be viewed as an act of mercy toward my underserving self.
In the last few weeks, I’ve realized the extent to which I don’t believe I am worthy of people’s compassion. For instance, I had a question to ask about getting a Finnish ID card at the police station. However, I stood outside the police station for about 10 minutes searching online to make sure 1) that the answer to my question wasn’t already posted on their website, and 2) that I could just walk into the police station (did I need an appointment?). I almost didn’t walk in, feeling I hadn’t done enough prep work to walk into a police station and ask a question. While I haven’t had many encounters with the police in the United States, or elsewhere for that matter, the few I’ve had in the US have definitely made me want to avoid the entire institution altogether.
Eventually, I did work up the nerve to walk inside the building, and I went up to a woman behind the information desk to ask her my question. I asked in that, “I’m so sorry I don’t know the answer to this question; I really hope I’m not making a mistake here; please don’t yell at me; I’m really sorry I don’t speak Finnish already,” kind of way. My obvious stress and discomfort reflected back to her. I think she may have interpreted all of my anxiety as fear that she couldn’t speak in English, and she seemed somewhat annoyed. After greeting me in Finnish, she quickly switched to English with no problem at all, answered my question, and gave me a look that seemed to ask, “Why are you so distressed? Was that all?”
It occurred to me that I walked into many situations, especially those with institutions and people in positions of power, afraid of the outcome and afraid I didn’t belong. This fear or anxiety then multiplies in new environments where I'm unfamiliar with the language and culture. An interesting manifestation of my anxiety around being in a new place has been my fear of doing laundry in my building in the evenings. I just feel like the basement is a good place someone could attack me, and no one would hear my screams for help over the sound of the dryer. My attackers in these imagined scenarios are always white men. In the last few weeks, I’ve come to realize the extent to which I fear white people despite having many wonderful white friends. I realized the extent to which I only expected compassion from white people who already “knew me” and knew the kind of person I was. In fact, I only really expect compassion from people who know me, and I walk into all other encounters fearful that my blackness and femininity are reason enough for unkindness in all forms, from a simple look or gesture to blatant discrimination.
The help I’ve received here in the last three weeks would be in the contexts I’ve known before considered exceptional service and kindness. It makes me wonder what it is about this place, perhaps this particular city (a small university town?), that allows the people I've encountered the mental capacity and time to make compassion their default setting. I wondered to what extent the absence of racial tensions that are present in the States and increased gender equality impacted these encounters. Is this the kind of service white people, perhaps more specifically white men, are more accustomed to in the States? Were the lessons I’d learned about not taking up “too much” space, not asking for “too much,” or not expecting “too much” lessons I could put aside here? Was it okay to be black and female and kinky-haired here?
I don't have those answers yet.
I'll just end with the most compassionate thing I’ve experienced here in Finland, which relates to Alaya’s daycare placement. Right now, Bochuan and I need to get what is called a “municipality of residence” to qualify for social benefits like discounted daycare rates and health insurance. We have applied for it, but it could take as long as two months to go through due to COVID-related delays. One of our concerns was that we wouldn’t be able to send Alaya to daycare while we were waiting, but surprisingly, they are giving us the benefits first and then figuring out the rest later. During the meeting with Immigration Services, she also mentioned, “If you get sick, don’t worry, you can still go to the hospital even though you don’t have your insurance card yet.”
Wait, what? While I’m waiting for all the necessary documents that prove I qualify for these services, you’re just going to provide them to me? Is this what has made Finland the happiest country 4 years in a row? I guess we’ll see.
Of course, I’m in the honeymoon phase, and human nature will mean that I’ll start taking all these kindnesses for granted at some point soon. It’ll stop seeming so surprising, or it won’t stand out as much. But maybe it’ll also start to subconsciously tell me that I am worthy of compassion just as I am, just as we all are.
Living here, I have seen a real-life example of what a society could look like if we gave up this notion of “pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps,” the belief that those who are wealthy or successful have become so primarily from their own hard work, or the idea that if we give people too many resources, they’ll just take advantage of it. It’s not a dog-eat-dog world, or at least it doesn’t have to be. Human beings are innately wired towards compassion, and we can nurture that skill. For the most part, when we show people compassion, they reflect that back to us.
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