Lonely hearts and the magic world of cruises

How do you break away from a social isolation not of your own making but that fate played a cruel trick on you. A separation from a long-time companion, a divorce that ended a cycle of love and hate, an untimely death that claimed the love of your life, or just plain indifference to the noble functions of the heart have destined many to a life of murderous loneliness.

Sometimes it is none of the above that exile people to the barren life of common trivialities, to a deafening monotony that is punctuated only by the changing of television channels, as one desperately searches for programs that abbreviate the gap between something and nothing. Many couples married for a long time find themselves saddled in a routine of television watching where conversations are no longer relevant and silences become excusable.

At this particular time when the world is gripped by unstable finances and shaky employments, the feeling of anguished uncertainty over life and the attainment of happiness becomes so untenable and desperate. How does one get away from these crippling emotions of desolation? How does one break away from an externally-imposed social isolation when money is scarce and hard to earn? How does a lonely heart find a cure for its constant ache?

For people living in the Nordic countries, there is the gift of the sea. An abundance of archipelagic waters have given life to cruises. One can choose from a number of cruise programs: whole-day cruise to Mariehamn, or 36-hours to Åbo, Finland or the two-nights on board, one day city sight-seeing cruises to Helsinki, Finland, Tallin, Estonia or Riga, Latvia. Name it and the cruising ships of Viking Line and Tallink/Silja Lines are there everyday to make dreams ( some, anyway) come true, even for a borrowed time.

A long time ago, cruises were a luxury and affordable only to those in the upper social class. Think of the classic Agatha Christie Nile cruises where beautiful people cavort with one another and pretend to be someone else other than their real selves. To go on a cruise was to leave behind a wretched life and enter the magic world of make believe where there is music, dancing, dining, flirting and partner-seeking. Life becomes fatalistic. Live today or tonight because tomorrow you could be dead. Carpe diem!

The Nordics are truly egalitarian in the sense that the myth of Agatha Christie's elite crowd of dress-to-kill people on a cruise ( with an agenda to murder ), has been subverted by proletarianism. Cruises are for all, the different kinds of humanity that inhabit this wonderful region of equality between men and women in the pursuit of elusive happiness. In these ships that silently weave through the endless waters of the archipelago and the Baltic sea, men and women pursue with fierce equality the dream of dancing away the night with a Prince Charming or a Cinderella, and not run away at midnight and lose a golden shoe.#