RELATIONSHIPS

Selected Stories on How to Improve Life

Series 1: How We Can Fix the Imperfections

With the new listening function in Medium, we can listen to the stories instead of reading. This means that we can easily listen to the content we are most interested in at the same time as we perform other actions, e.g.

• cleaning in the house or
• other simple housework,
• relaxation one day when one is home alone and wants to immerse oneself in a theme or an author,
• while going for a walk in the neighborhood or a long walk in nature
• during longer car journeys on low-traffic roads

This collection offers a selection of my stories written and published on Medium in 2018 and 2019. The stories can be read consecutively or one after the other over many days, depending on interest in the topic and the time the reader has available.

In these stories, I share experiences and thoughts I have made through a more than 70 yearlong life. My basic attitude, which I think these stories reflect, is that life is good. Life can be demanding, but also very good. We all need other people close to us, but we also need time alone.

CONTENT

My Perfect Life in This Perfect World

# 1. Me and my mornings

A Perfect Life in This Perfect World

# 2. The child is not guilty. The child is innocent.

The Most Important — In a Perfect World

# 3. My best friend

Our Perfect World

# 4. Series: How We Can Fix the Imperfections

The Change — In Our Perfect World

# 5. Fixing the imperfections — should I divorce?

1. My Perfect Life in This Perfect World

Me and my mornings

Published on June 20, 2018. 3 min read

Hi, I am Øivind. I think I am a relatively normal human being. I know something about life. Like every human, I know something important about life.

I wake up every day, feeling my body’s weight, feeling awfully heavy and dark inside. I open up my eyes, and I think. Oh — here’s another day. How shall I manage to get myself out of this bed? Up to stand on the floor. And to walk out of the sleeping room and into another day in my life?

My back hurts. A dumb, profound pain. My legs are stiff. I could be walking on wooden legs. Or crutches. My legs feel like crutches when I get myself up to a standing position and take the first steps.

Then it’s done for now. I am up on my feet, and I know I have won another day. My private, small lottery. Always a win-win.

Most of the time I feel okay. When I get myself out of the bed. When I get up and walk into the kitchen. When I put on music, and start my computer. I feel okay. I could even say: I feel good. I am happy

I love this moment of the day. It is full of nothing. Full of openness, openings, opportunities. I walk around in the kitchen, looking out of the window, watching the fjord and the trees between me and the waterside.

The house is silent. I have music on, okay. But music is not noise. Music is food for my soul. Music is wrapping my soul in a softcover.

I am happy when I am alone in the house, a few hours in the morning. Music on, peaceful music, songs that I over years have listened to hundreds of times.

I look at the weather. The fjord is shining gray and green with a taste of blue. A dark blue with a gloomy gray brilliant surface. The breeze is giving life to the branches on the trees, the breeze creates an enigmatic pattern on the steel colored surface of the fjord.

I put on the coffee. Always two cups of coffee. A glass of milk and one and a half spoon of cod liver oil. I swallow. It doesn’t taste bad. It is not good either. I know it is good for me, for my aging body. So I swallow.

Like I swallow so many other things in my life. Because I need to. Because I’d better take it, instead of rebelling. Instead of making a lot of noise and make people near me sad. For nothing.

This is what it is all about. The small things in life. And the bigger things. All of it — that’s what I will write about. Here in my online journal. Published here, so that anyone can read. And you can think, have your own thoughts and make your own reflections. And hold this up towards whatever you can compare this with. Your own life? The world, our reality?

It will not be a competition. It will be communication. Perhaps dialogues, when someone feels for saying something, after reading me.

2. A Perfect Life in This Perfect World

The child is not guilty. The child is innocent.

Published on June 21, 2018. 4 min read

Waking up from a night’s sleep is always different. But also in some ways similar, each morning.

I know a new day is coming. New opportunities, new pleasures, or things to worry about.

I get up and walk to the kitchen. I look outside, I can see a blue sky with some clouds. I think it’s going to be another perfect day.

Do we really know and do we appreciate living in a country where life is safe? A society where we can wake up every morning and know that the world outside the inner circles around us is normal, safe.

But normal — not normal. What is normal?

I open my laptop and start reading an e-mail from HuffPost:

SEPARATED CHILDREN BEING HELD IN ‘TENDER AGE SHELTERS’ The Associated Press reported Tuesday night that infants and toddlers separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border as a result of the White House “zero tolerance” immigration policy are being held at “tender age shelters.” The AP reports that the shelters are filled with distraught children who are “hysterical, crying and acting out.”

In the world today nothing seems normal. Many places there is like a state of emergency. In the USA Donald Trump’s government has set up camps (=prisons!) “filled with distraught children who are hysterical, crying and acting out.” Children being taken from their parents. Children who are totally innocent, who are not to blame for events that happen in the world, or for what their parents or relatives have done.

They are only children! Children who were just born into the world and who suddenly find themselves kidnapped, imprisoned — brief in a disastrous situation. The children are placed in camps in different places in the USA.

• The children do not know where their parents are.
• The parents do not know where their children are.

Nothing is normal.

These children are being traumatized. They will most probably have post-traumatic stress effects. What will their life be like?

I think of myself when I grew up. I was born and grew up in a small industrial town in Norway. The second world war had just ended. The world had just begun building up again what that war had destroyed. I have understood that it was a period of optimism. During my youth, I felt optimistic myself, despite the atomic war threat that came as a dark shadow and an ice-cold wind with they called the “Cold War”.

My father was a worker at one of the three big factories in the town. Together with him my mother was the fixed point in my existence. She took care of my younger brother and me, and of everything else in the family, as it was usual for a housewife in that period.

I could play with other children, I could be with my family, I could learn what I needed to learn. I went to school. I could look to the future with confidence. When I was 18, I left the town and moved to a larger city to start my studies at the university.

Of course, not everything was okay when I was a child. I met resistance, I had to learn some things the hard way. But it was a safe world — relatively speaking.

• I knew where I came from, who I was, and who I wanted to become.
• I had thoughts about the future.
• I had confidence in the future.

What about these children in the US internment camps?

They are not guilty of what their relatives are being accused of. They should not be punished for what others have done. They are not to be punished. But Donald Trump is doing exactly that. Punishing them for being brought by their parents across the US border in the quest for a better life, flying from an imperfect existence in an imperfect world.

These children are subject to huge injustice. What about the trauma that these kids get? Who will help them? How will they be able to live a good, normal life?

We live in a world that could be perfect. Or at least we live in a world where it is possible to imagine that the world could be perfect. If only humans did their best. Did the necessary to approach that goal.

I wish I could say that I am confident.

That I believe in the future.

I wish I could have confidence in this idea:

A perfect future for all children in this perfect world

There is enough to engage with for every human who is able to see what is going on. It is not just about the kidnapped children in the US internment camps.

It is about who governs the world, and how we — the citizens of the world — elect the people we want to govern us. We need to restore our belief in our future. The future belongs to the children.

3. The Most Important — In a Perfect World

My best friend

Published on June 29, 2018. 3 min read

Much of what I have learned about positive thinking emanates from my mother (94th birthday this August). She’s a wonderful person and has always been.

She never complains, she never talks about other people negatively. She gives from herself, all the time, always.

She inspires me to write, she’s in many ways or part of much of my writing.

After my last visit yesterday I was again inspired to write. My goal with this piece of writing is to create small text blocks — aphorisms? — that says something which I feel is important about life and existence.

I stand alone

I am someone who stands alone. I am a loner. I stand by myself. I can live with that. I am even satisfied with it. I know I can be lucky. I can even be happy with myself. My own company.

High up and deep down

I admit it, I know of ups and downs. I am used to it. I can feel incredibly high. Then the next day I can feel down. I’m stuck so badly down in the gray, in the mist of my soul, when I feel uncomfortable, when I feel this bad.

Fear

Are you afraid of something? What are you afraid of? I don’t think I feel fear any longer. I suggest you ask this question: Do you give fear space in your life?

Friends

Do I have friends? Certainly, yes. I am my own best friend. But other friends? Other people, yes. There are people who are at a distance. People I see, people who see me sometimes. But not all the time.

My best friend

I stand alone. I stand by myself, I trust myself. I am my best friend. I am not my own enemy. So I am not? Excuse me, yes I know I can also be my own enemy. Things can happen, I can do silly things. Sometimes I don’t take good enough care of the nearest ones, of myself.

Choices

Choices are decisive for quality of life. What you eat, what you drink, exercise. And you need to take good care of your mental health. You should train your mind to be creative for a healthy life. Activity is a key for a good life, mental activity and physical activity.

Important

What’s important? When I’m down, what helps me and keeps me up? How can I be strong? The key is to see yourself, to see others near you, and know you’re seen by others.

Inside

Everything is inside of you. There is no power in the world that can make you happy if you’re not there for yourself. You must see yourself. You must like what you see. You must show yourself generosity, compassion.

Compassion and kindness

With others always show compassion and kindness Always do what is possible to reduce contempt in relations with other people

Love

Meeting someone and falling in love is a gift from yourself to yourself and from that other person to you. Happiness is to feel the love inside of you towards the other person, and to feel the love coming from that other person towards you.

4. Our Perfect World

Series: How We Can Fix the Imperfections

Published on July 5, 2018. 2min read

We know what we have We know what we want.

Oh! Sorry — am I taking for granted what is not obvious?

Perhaps. I’ll speak for myself I know what I have I know what I want.

Every morning the sun rises Every morning people on earth rise from their bed more or less ready to meet a new day New chances to fix the imperfections of the world

We can fix the imperfections of the world You and I Together Other people are not my enemy or adversary

The world is full of people who are at a distance Many of them will never see me appreciate who I am or what I do

That’s how it is Seeing each other is our challenge our first task When we see each other we become real we exist in the other person’s mind

We must learn to see people to take care of people who see us We must see those who are near us Who are with us in this perfect world

Our vocation Should be to work together in social structures political systems Work with artistic creation Work emotionally using our intelligence to fix the imperfections

My friend We should understand it by now Shouldn’t we People are resources People are environments Together we can move mountains

The Change — In Our Perfect World

# 5. Fixing the imperfections — should I divorce?

Published on August 19, 2018 in P.S. I Love You. 4 min read

I am in a quest for the meaning of life. I think I have always been, perhaps without knowing it.

My life has been full of events, challenges, people, expectations and duties. Love, family, work — all sorts of things. All the things that had to come first. I guess that’s what life is for many people. This is not a privilege of mine. Clearly not.

But now I am here. I am in a situation and in a position where I can lean back, take some time and think. That’s clearly a privilege!

I am in a relationship. I have been here for several decades. And as I see this it has been a good life together with her. I do not hesitate when writing this. I mean it, I can look anyone in their eyes and say it: We’ve had more than 30 good years together. 30 years of shared life, shared challenges and discussions, arguments and reconciliations.

We have also had more serious difficulties. Misunderstandings, loss of confidence, maybe moments of distrust and contempt. Also quite recently I have felt sad and lost again in the land of shadows. Our difficulties never seem to come to an end. I have hope, and then the hope is gone again.

I guess that my feelings here touch what Henrik Ibsen had in mind when he wrote “A Doll’s House” when Nora says that “the Wonderful Thing” did not occur. A deeply felt deception towards the loved one.

This is the background for why I started to draft a story entitled Should I divorce?

Writing and publishing is an experiment. My intention is to write a series of stories where I develop the narrative of my life and our relationship, seen through my glasses, and in the overall perspective of the search for meaning.

I cannot say today how this will end. But what I can say, is that I feel confident. Both regarding the path my life will follow in the nearest future, and also the writing challenge.

About the latter, I feel confident because I know that there’s plenty of stuff to write about: events in our common daily life, how we meet each other verbally and emotionally, our common projects, our children and grandchildren, our family and the way we are influenced by them.

We are two grown-ups with many similarities of character, but also with much that separates us. She is first of all, a verbal person, she likes talking. I am a man who writes, based on the never stopping thoughts that are taking me high and low, everywhere and nowhere, all the time.

In the past, we have had many good moments, years where we were cultivating each other as lovers do. But we have also had many difficult periods, like most couples who live together for decades, I believe.

There is also this:

In my relationship with her have never felt better than now.

Almost never before.

Those words I wrote just now are strong words. I admit — they are very strong words. But I maintain them. This is exactly what I feel and what I think now, at this point. Today.

A part of my motivation for writing this resides in a need I have to dive into our relationship and examine what happens between us, and what happens inside myself. I feel that the last years of our relationship have been like a sort of rollercoaster where I feel high up in one moment, and deep down in the next

Just think of it: we’ve lived together for more than three decades. When we met and the first years of our shared life we were so intensely in love. We enjoyed each other’s company on all levels: Emotionally, sexually, intellectually, socially.

Then everyday life came and took us. We experienced what many couples experience, and we were marked by the events and what happened between us.

I want to explore the emotional and mental fields inside us and between us.

I search for meaning.

— Who am I?

— Who are we, and why?

— What shall I think of the changes I feel take place inside me?

— Where am I headed? Where are we headed, she and I?

I know we do not live in a perfect world.

I also know that many people together with us every day do their best to contribute to that goal: a perfect world. I want to be part of that huge movement, which is to contribute to creating a better world.

It is about fixing the imperfections, and one of the very demanding questions I feel I face is this one:

— Should I divorce?

Do you read my stories? — I read yours.

Øivind H. Solheim is a novel author and a nature photographer from Norway who loves writing fiction, poetry, essays, and articles helping others understand life, other humans, and themselves. He has published six novels, two non-fiction books, and a poetry book.

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