The ethos of starting from scratch has always been with me throughout my life. Some people seem to avoid that kind of way of living; everything should always stay exactly as it was before, and change can feel like a threatening stranger. In truth, change is the only thing in our lives that remains. Everything changes eventually, and to me, that is the greatest gift.
After upper secondary school, I took a gap year. People were horrified. Adults said I would fall completely off track and never get a place to study, that everything would be lost. My mother was embarrassed. I worked at a small theatre and was happy.
I was a little shocked when the doors to the Theatre Academy did not open after all, but in the end I was happy with my place at a university of applied sciences. A new beginning for a young sapling. I moved often and far, following jobs, loves, and adventures. It was easy to leave when my belongings fit into an old Jetta and my heart did not grow attached to anywhere. I thirsted for adventure and feared nothing; life was constantly full of new beginnings.
> My courage was marvelled at, while at the same time I wondered how anyone could stay if their throat was constantly tightening.
I left a permanent job for a few months’ temporary position and moved to Helsinki, because I was utterly drained by the working atmosphere and the level of leadership. My courage was marvelled at, while at the same time I wondered how anyone could stay if their throat was constantly tightening. I started over.
After the temporary position ended, work did not come immediately after all. I was ill for six months with every circulating virus under the sun, and I was ashamed of being unemployed. It was a heavy time.
I found a permanent job. And from there, things began again: a new beginning. I bought a home and painted the walls. I became a mother. During my parental leave, my job had disappeared and something else was offered in its place. I resigned, sold the apartment, and left Helsinki.
Unexpectedly, I found myself alone with my child. I found a cute home, got a job, and started completely from scratch. I was accepted to study for a master’s degree at a university of applied sciences. Through a chain of circumstances, however, I had to quit both work and my studies, because I was completely alone and without a support network. I sold my washer-dryer tower, took my child, and moved to Helsinki to mend my career. Another new beginning, this time in a studio apartment in Punavuori. I got a job, bought the end unit of a row house, and we became anchored to life. Everything once again seemed to be settling into place.
BAM! COVID! The jobs disappeared. The dream home had to be sold and I had to start—well, from scratch, of course. Looking back, the urgent feeling inside me that I had to sell the home saved me from the interest rates and falling housing prices of the following years. Change had once again saved me, pulling me toward something new, something still unknown but better.
Life moved forward. I missed my home region badly and suffered through Helsinki, even though the screeching machinery of the metro made my back teeth ache. Work carried me, my career progressed, and the outlines of my working life began to take shape. I completed a degree. I decided to return home to Kuopio and trust that change, this time chosen by me, would carry me again. Then I was accepted once more into the master’s programme at the university of applied sciences, the very same one I had once had to leave unfinished.
I returned home, looked out at Lake Kallavesi from my window in the mornings, and began building my life here. I got to know new people, found the best lunch spots, and noticed how much fun and interesting things were happening in the city, and how much room there was to create things myself. I fell in love and recently got married; quite a new beginning too, and one I could never have predicted would arrive.
Not all changes ask whether it is all right for them to come. They arrive with force and change your life into something permanently different. The pain of change can be enormous, but the end result can be the greatest gift of all. You have not failed if life surprises you. Sometimes that is simply what happens. You always have the right to change direction. To change your scenery and your thoughts. Things always work out somehow, and the way they happen may turn out to be something better.
(And you, who did not get into the school you wanted this summer, believe Auntie Hanna when she says: everything will still work out beautifully.)
The writer is a woman in her forties, a change manager of her own life, who bakes exceptionally good rhubarb pie.