Spent yesterday with my family at the Trouville beach on Sandhamn Island in the outer archipelago. Really nice. 25 degrees centigrade and calm, sunny weather. Lots of people were there so it got kind of crowded. Four people stood out in the crowd:
• Two twenty-something women suntanning for 5 hours, making minimum conversation with each other, only listening to music coming from a mobile with an attached speaker.
• Two hunky-style brothers in their mid-twenties to thirties with blondy hair and glistening white teeth. First throwing frisbee in the crowd and now and then hitting folks around. Then switching to volleyball and missing from time to time so the ball crashed into picnics and small kids.
Perhaps nothing to get excited about. But then my son, 8 years old, remarked ”this is strange behavior at such a peaceful place” and I saw the mild madness myself. These people are so separated from nature that they need portable entertainment for their leisure. Connecting with nature is not their goal. For them, nature is just there, and brings no enjoyment in itself. Being still, and having no noise around them probably makes them very very restless…