There is a noticeable gulf between selflessness and selfishness that has widened with  the raising of children in my neck of the woods — those who still live with their parents in the same red coloured homes — which, incidentally, have become faded. So stark is that difference that one believes their generation will bring to extinction the entire concept of helping someone else before you help yourself.

Things aren't as bad as they seem. They really aren't. Last I looked, the great apocalypse hadn't come upon us, nor had there been a rapture that I'm aware of. 

The closest sign we see of the end times are six months of darkness with the strength of light unable to crack the horizon in areas like Luleå - a place where they talk funny and run all of their words together. Somehow, magically in the summertime, the skies seem to prevail and hold their own for the greater part of 20 hours each day.

We're known as much for the "Swedish Midsommar" as we are for "Swedish nice", a label which has spilled over across our borders, across the Atlantic Ocean, and into smaller communities in places like Minnesota - a perfect stopover for our weary, our weak, and our poor who emigrated many decades ago to a land of better opportunity. 

If "Minnesota nice" rings a bell or three to you, blame it on the Scandinavians for throwing rudeness out of the window on their way over to the promised land which was America. I think they were on to something as they left behind the Viking days of old and put on a happy face as they embraced new lives.

There has been a rupture here in Sweden, however, and that break in generosity is beginning to hide my country behind a wall of obscurity.

We have never really been a people who are particularly welcoming in terms of making quick friends or hangout buddies, but we've not been known for overt rudeness, either. Somewhere along time, the winds of change kicked up dust over the grounds our parents once traversed, and my generation was left with a less clear vision of values, goals, and life objectives as those a step in front of us. 

We weren't all clueless, but there were enough of us around to lay a good scare into pastors, teachers, and some of the police as to what awaited the following generation once my contemporaries graduated into real life and had families of their own. If premonition had tangible rewards, those groups of prognosticators would have been millionaires several times over.