The Geography of Bliss-cOPENhagen
Copenhagen · Denmark · The Geography of Bliss
Foreign Land cOPENhagen: The Geography of Bliss
Sticker shock, hygge, Kierkegaard, and the strange Danish skill of lowering the volume on the happiness chase.
One can advise comfortably from a safe port.
The cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears, or the sea. Copenhagen offered all three in smaller doses: the sea at the harbour, tears at the price of coffee, and sweat from calculating Danish kroner.
Safe Port
One Can Advise Comfortably from Shore
Kierkegaard at the harbour: risk looks different from the deck.
One can advise comfortably from a safe port.
Copenhagen is the most expensive city in Scandinavia to visit, but it is also one of the easiest places to understand the seduction of comfort. The streets are clean, the systems work, and the future appears to have arrived early.
A Cup of Jonus
cOPENhagen and the Price of Cozy
Hygge with the locals—plus five euros for coffee.
Not since the late 1990s—when the dollar took a beating against the yen and I ordered two Domino’s pizzas and two bottles of Coke in Tokyo for 110 U.S. dollars—have I experienced sticker shock like this.
Five euros for a coffee. About eight bucks. It makes Starbucks look like a thrift shop. I did not even attempt the conversion to Danish kroner.
Field Note
The Little Mermaid Is Little
The statue is small. The city is bling.
The Geography of Bliss
Nothing Is Rotten in Denmark
The happiest place on Earth may simply have lowered the volume.
Copenhagen may be the most beautiful place for simply being there. Sorry, Disney World, but this country may be the happiest place on Earth because Danes have relaxed and lowered their standards.
Depression is the inability to construct a future. For Danes, the future is not only already here—it is evenly distributed. Paid education, state-covered health insurance, a year of maternity leave, and babies safe enough to be left outside.
There is enough quo in their status. Living feels as predictable as an episode of Seinfeld.
Lige Nu
Just Now
Danish pragmatism as a form of accidental Buddhism.
Lige nu means “just now.” Danes would make good Buddhists because they are not trapped on the treadmill of consumption or chasing the happiness jackpot.
They are pragmatic, busy people, tracking high on the Gross National Happiness scale.
Those who float away their lives on ships are forever journeying, and their homes are wherever their travels take them.
The Leap
Kierkegaard and the Distance of Humor
Boredom, risk, and the despairing refusal to be oneself.
Søren Kierkegaard, founder of existential thought, was full of honest angst. For him, money was not the root of all evil. Boredom was—the despairing refusal to be oneself.
Without risk, faith is impossible. He coined the phrase leap of faith.
He also used humor as a healthy way of creating distance between himself and his problems—a way of standing back and gaining perspective. I have misquoted him for years, crediting Nietzsche with: To label me is to negate me.
Final Reflection
The Cure Is Still Salt Water
Copenhagen’s lesson is not that comfort solves everything. It is that a life becomes more liveable when enough is enough, the future is trusted, and the present is allowed to remain just now.