“When the spring comes,” he told me as I leaned on the printer, “it’s a mercy. It’s a miracle. You’ll catch people lifting their necks, turning their faces, like a plant, towards the sun.”

He didn't have to tell me twice. I've lived in the cold and the dark for a long time now, so long I almost can't believe I'm still doing it. But nothing is as glorious as light after darkness. Nothing was ever as precious as early summer days in Minnesota, when you couldn't believe the world could be like this again, and you had almost forgotten that people walked the earth in great numbers.

Denmark averaged 19 hours of sunlight for the entire month of January. Less than a day of sunlight...for the entire month. When the sun came out on Sunday, there was no time to waste. When you're really inside your head, some days you imagine you're part of some post-apocalyptic place where everyone is sickly pale and you've forgotten what faces look like without florescent. I read that some place in Norway, a tiny town nestled in a valley, gets absolutely no sun, so they rely on mirrors to project sun into the valley, and they all huddle together to feel it on their face. Copenhageners seemed to be smiling in droves on Sunday, smiling at strangers, peeking into cafes, little kids hiding behind their parents, the mood suddenly lifted, all because rays had touched our cheeks for a real moment.

It's strange but the knowledge that it'll get lighter soon makes me want to relish the darkness. I've never felt that before. I want the candles, I want the thick city-fog that makes the cobblestones wet and lets my imagination run wild with how Copenhagen looked 200, 300, 400 years ago. I want the frosty, foreboding lakes, the ice sheets, everything. It'll be hot and sparkly and wonderful before I know it, but my mind wants the physical equivalent of the extra-cold shower before the pool plunge, the polar extremes, to enshroud itself in darkness to make the summer dazzle with even greater ability, to implode in on itself with a crazed comprehension of the sun and endless days to lose track of time in.

63,000. That, according to the Danish Red Cross, is the number of people in a poll that were going to be alone on Christmas in Denmark this past December. What's one aspect of society the Red Cross is dealing with in Denmark? Loneliness. Dying alone. Being released from jail and being alone. Entering as an asylum-seeker and being alone. I took a student group to the Danish Red Cross and we all were a little bit surprised to hear that something as seemingly intangible of a humanitarian need as loneliness was a focus. But we were told that more people died from loneliness than many other causes, that it takes years off of your life. An example: They have volunteers that sit for three, four days, 24 hours a day, next to the bed of a dying person, holding their hand. I was also interested to hear about some of their other programs, for example, slightly different theme: a group of two or three volunteers that are assigned a person who was in jail, that after they are released meet with them to aid in the transition. One might be a soccer enthusiast, one might know computers, one might know finance.

What small countries can do in their backyard.

The Secret to Desire, Esther Perel, TEDtalk

'So we come to one person, and we are basically are asking them to provide us with what an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise.

I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long.'