Funny how things work out in the day-to-day basis.
As I sat in the kitchen absorbing the days events I pensively mourned Anna Lindh’s death, I didn’t think too much, only a few conspiracies crept up in me, and I began to wonder how is it that I am so affected by the death of this politician, how did she manage to come into the stream of my consciousness? Perhaps it is my admiration of this society to include women in the everyday affair of government, how her face dominated the news when it mattered to express her views, those views from the government and how she fought to promote those opinions in the face of harsh criticism, because she so much also represented my views. I felt that she genuinely represented me, in those meetings, by being outspoken, saying her mind, and it didn’t hurt that she was beautiful as well, I always found her smile a glowing shine in the midst of gloomy faces in those men’s meetings, in other words, she made me proud to see her fight the good fight.
My wife is also going through the same pangs except that she has other worries in her head, she wants to know why the doctors acted the way they did and wants to know what they did, she comes in a hurry, to see more on the TV, I say, how can you? There aren’t any more news at this time, and she answered something that made me feel Anna Lindh was still with us, she said “ They don’t care about anything else, Anna Lindh is dead.” I listened dumbfounded at the words, how even dead Anna was still very much with us. I realized too how instinctively my wife knows her own people.
It’s very hard for other countries to realize the society Sweden is, especially Stockholm, with its lifestyle and open society, I may complain all about how I perceive them but I never argue about their society because its so perfect that it’s actually dull, there isn’t much to criticize, the locals might differ, but I come from two different societies that make Sweden look like a paradise. There isn’t a perceived menace here, not even in the streets, society is built on a premise that everyone respects everyone, and that so long you don’t mess with me, I won’t mess with you, people walk around like there isn’t much to worry about in the street, a pick pocket here and there, maybe a gang related crime in the suburbs but for the most part, this society is safe in every sense of the word. People care for people here.
It is a paradise, indeed, and Anna Lindh was one of it representatives, a society that feared very little, has no security concerns and is the envy of the world because of its well functioning government. Swedes live in peace, very much unscathed from the rest of the world who is seemingly falling apart; in Sweden, they live the morrow others can only dream of, Swedes invented the future, as a Spaniard friend of mine told me and many countries in the rest of Europe see this society as a roll model, they are the future.
So it is a shock, a rude awakening, that things have changed, that Swedish society is vulnerable, a place were maybe its openness is a now a luxury of sorts that Sweden didn’t know it had, and a commodity that was ripped by the knife of the murderer who took Anna Lindh’s life, Sweden’s essence, away from us.