Some of the most beautiful and useful objects I live with were free or came into my life with other objects. I love the small stones I brought with me from Sweden and Finland and the ones I found here in Denmark. I appreciate the shells from the beach in Amager (an island in Denmark). The jars I use for tea and water were home to organic pasta sauce. In the picture above are some pieces of string that came with various objects (such as my loved one's socks) into my life. Recently I used some of these pieces to decorate gifts that my loved one got for his family members. I also tie them to my apartment key. Every time I use the key, I think about living in harmony with nature and honouring small objects. The bag in which I keep these pieces of string also came with another object, and I use it for storage.
As I was looking at these pieces of string, I was thinking about life, how it unfolds in mysterious ways, and how it presents new chapters and spaces for us to navigate. My move to Denmark did not go as smoothly as I was hoping it would be. I was dealing with much stress as I resigned from my position at a Finnish university as an act of activism against violence in academia. I had to adjust to a new country. Even though I'd lived in other Nordic countries (Sweden and Finland) before I moved to Denmark, Denmark is still different. The relationship between my partner and I became challenging. Due to his childcare arrangement, we could not spend much time together. Then we decided to work on our relationship and he introduced me to his child. It's very easy to love a young fellow human being. Experiencing love towards a child who is not mine feels natural. Something that I find difficult to navigate is step parenting in relation to ecological living. In the capitalist system, love is too often expressed via consumption, and consumerism is certainly not something I want to engage in. I contemplate how this young fellow human will approach my zero-waste practices, whether she will be interested in them or find them inconvenient. If I had my own children, ecological practices would be part of their life from the very beginning. But this situation I am navigating currently is different. I am feeling empathy towards this fellow human being as she will be navigating different households. Perhaps this is confusing for a young person.