You Can’t Play Poker without Cards

Many of us have apparently been given too much butter as kids, because as adults we still imagine we can find an inner genius in ourselves. When I was a kid, I too used to imagine that God had great plans for me, that I was the chosen one. As time wore on, it became clear no plans were made for me.

You can be anything you want to be, mothers and student counsellors have repeated for too long. We want to be the new madonna or just otherwise booming, beloved and beautiful. Everyone is made to imagine they’re big shots. When we’re young, we think we own the world. We hear what we want to hear. And us Finns feel like we’ve won the lottery. We are brainwashed into believing it before we’re out of our nappies. An ingenious, easy and affordable way to keep the citizens in check and satisfied. We need no bread and circuses, the Finnish people are content to repeat their one and only mantra. Believe me, this is no funfair!

We make great plans for our lives, we want to become famous artists and the Danube of thoughts or at least want to get some third-rate first book award. The most infuriating type is the faux-bohemian intellectual wannabe with their cerebral aura who loiters around in the corridors of libraries and the faculty of arts adorned with thick-rimmed glasses
keen to discuss Derrida.

The yearning for success burns. We put in long hours to attain these goals. We have been made to believe that hard work will be rewarded at some point in the distant future. We think that the present is just a prologue before the limelight. Everyone wants a place in the sun. The reality hits one fi ne day when we understand that our goal is
unobtainable. We think we’re in the winning team to the bitter end. We are prisoners of this illusion. I will be something someday. We cannot admit the less glorious truth that we should be happy if we belong to the caste of the mediocre. Your fortune is not waiting round the corner. The world is cruel and the winter too long.

N.B. If you feel like someone special, like a genius in the making, it may be a symptom of a mental disorder, a personality susceptible to depression or schizophrenia.

Emilia Ukkonen,
the artist is a spoilt child of the 21st century