Jantelagen should be put to bed.

Last Thursday I was reading some poems from my newly released book "Where´s the manual?", of course I was terribly terrified and had problems with standing up straight before even walking into the café where the event was held. Once in the hot, thick air, meeting the crowd and greeting some of my friends I was prepared to run back home again. For the record, I didn´t. Instead I was focusing on keeping up some sort of calm apperance and breathing regularly. Somehow this technique worked because I sort of managed to read my 15 minutes worth of text and even dared to look at my audience. And the absolutely best bit, I was happy with my performance.



Pics above: Café Mejeriet, where the event Dinkytown was held.

A very common expression that reflects Swedish mentality is "jantelag" which basically means that you are not to say anything good about yourself. If you happen to be a brilliant football player you would probably describe yourself as "quite good" or "not worse than anyone else in my team". You are not to have a big head and pat yourself on the shoulder for achieving something good; a good song you´ve written, a specially nice lasagne you´ve made or if your last riding lesson went really well. But you are more than welcome to tone down your skills and the sides of you that show off how good you are at certain things.

I don´t know why our society´s mentality has turned into a self denial and repressing way of being. People are held back by a insvisible law who is telling us to not appreciate ourselves. I´m not trying to proclaim that all of us are going to turn into big show offs and regard ourselves to be better than our neighbour, our next etc. But I want to make a stand for the right to be happy with oneself, and the right to gain self confidence through the experience of feeling happy with ones achievement!

So therefore I was brilliant last thursday; for 15 minutes I owned that stage and I did it well. So dear "jantelag", I´m putting you to bed. At least today. So should everyone do from time to time, maybe you´ll discover that it actually made you feel good.

Over&Out
/sara