The author reflects on a childhood memory of dusk, when the old sodium streetlights would turn on, casting the world in a yellow monochrome that always made him sad. One evening, his father noticed his quietness and asked why. The father then suggested they get ice cream in the village. They rode to the shop on a bicycle just before it closed. Standing outside under a lantern, eating ice cream with sprinkles in the snow, his father said, “Lekker he?” (Delicious, huh?). The author felt his father was acknowledging they were experiencing the same feeling together.
Now thirty years old, the author lost his father to cancer ten years ago. He describes growing up as similar to those evenings: as time passes, the world loses its color. Broken hearts, bad decisions, unfulfilled dreams, and unspoken words accumulate. He wondered how to cope with this fact of life and how to stay light-hearted and resist bitterness.
In his twenties, he tried to fight off embitterment by immersing himself in philosophy, art, powerlifting, trading, travel, filmmaking, and writing. He believed that pursuing meaningful answers justified life’s suffering. A mentor in art school once told him that being a romantic in this world is difficult. Over time, his search for answers made the world seem bleaker. The feeling of sadness that once only happened at dusk became constant. He reached a point where every answer he found led to a more bleak world.
During a difficult period, he spoke with a woman who seemed light and full of color. She always chose to be light, even in serious conversations. She suggested he was simply a man exploring genuinely and should continue exploring, regardless of convenience. He realized he had stopped searching for questions and had only been looking for answers.
The author explains that the unknown is a child’s friend, but becomes an enemy as one grows up, causing heartache and hopelessness. That hopelessness led him into an abyss where he felt he had nothing left to lose. With nothing to lose, he felt he could go anywhere and do anything. The unknown then became the only place that still felt alive.
He and his love walked backwards for two months across northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago to experience what embracing the unknown felt like. Initially, they were constantly worried about catastrophe because they could not see where they were going. After slowing down, nothing terrible happened. The unknown stopped feeling threatening, and they felt lighter and more present. They then left Amsterdam and moved to the countryside of Panama to experience real solitude. In that solitude, he confronted the things he had been avoiding: the unwillingness to accept reality, the need to be something in a bleak world, and the desire to make sense of everything.
Through stories from others, the author learned that his father had also struggled with existence. On the night they got ice cream, his father did not try to fix his sadness or explain it away. He simply took him to get ice cream. The author now sees this as a refusal to let the monochrome feeling win. His father did not fight the sadness or pretend the world was not turning colorless. He just decided that was not a reason to skip ice cream with sprinkles.
Recently, sitting in the sun in Panama with his love, watching the day turn into night, the author found himself saying, “Lekker he?” He realized he was living in the same place his father had been all along: not above the world or against it, but inside it, enjoying something nice with someone he loves.
