What is a Good Life? #179
Trust, Water & Rewilding with Daniel Allen-Hörnfeldt
Hello and welcome to What is a Good Life? A project exploring the big questions around how we live and what actually matters.
This week, I’m reflecting on a conversation with Daniel Allen-Hörnfeld - Chairman of Umeå Kallbad and Head of Nature for People at Rewilding Sweden. He shares how his father's death became a turning point, how cold water swimming became a doorway back into his body, and how a small group of friends turned a Sunday morning dip into a movement.
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Take care, Mark
1. My Weekly Reflection
“I didn’t even realise there were seasons before I left London.”
At one point in Dan’s life he was working in the restaurant industry and he would frequently work 80 and 90 hour weeks. When other restauranteurs would come to his establishment for lunch, he would scoff at the notion that someone needed a lunch break.
A pint of wine, two servings in one plastic cup, in a late night dive bar was his first drink after work and he was smoking two packets of cigarettes a day. So the almost daily cycle went.
And as the path predictably goes, he went on to move to the countryside in northern Sweden, ended up working with a rewilding group to help restore our relationship with the living world, and he also recently had a podium finish at the Ice Swimming World Cup.
It is very easy to hold up both of those images as night and day, as a dichotomy. But I don’t see it that way. Nor do I see it as linearly bad and now good. There will be ups and downs continually regardless of the stories we tell.
What I am more interested in, from interviewing 300+ people around this question, is how life flows in really unpredictable ways. Sometimes there are clear turning points, other times it drifts, sometimes our repeated intentions compound.
For Dan it was a moment at his Dad’s funeral, when his father’s best friend in a tender moment between them cupped his belly and lovingly and quietly said to “look out for that, son.” It reignited his love for the water and swimming. And took his life in directions he said he could never have imagined.
The interesting thing for me is not the finality of it, but how it will keep moving.
But how nice it is to sit by the roadside for a moment and consider you are somewhere you could not have dreamed of at one point. I do this frequently with myself and in conversation with friends. It feels important to acknowledge.
Last month I had an exhibition, from this project, on display at a forum in Athens. As I stood between the pieces and looked around at the walls they were hanging on, considering my experience in finance, I had a moment of “how did I get here?” Financial precarity and all.
I finished a book last month, once again from this project, that filled me with a deep contentment as I gazed out at my neighbourhood from my office desk. I have been trying to write some version of it for three years, a mixture of relief and feeling full. It has also provided me with several uneasy moments since of how exactly do I publish it.
I had another moment with my wife this week where our child was crying loudly and there were a few frosty exchanges and curtness between us as we tended to Ava. I was amazed by how quickly we found a way for our hearts to open between us after they appeared to close just moments before.
How am I a part of a healthy relationship of 10 years given I often felt like a guarded, insecure wreck in past relationships?
I think the temptation with our lives is to grade the transitions and changes as bad or good, as problem and solution, as stuck and complete.
Where we sacrifice so much of now with the promise of something different. The ends justify the means rather than attending to life as it is.
As Dan points to in the conversation, even his wellness practices became ways to quash certain feelings rather than let them linger.
We attempt to live through winter solely by wishing and dreaming of summer. The winter will shape us every bit as much the summer does if we let it.
2. This Week’s Questions
Is there an aspect of your life that at one point you could only dream of, that you haven’t fully acknowledged?
Is there something you need to accept as part of your life even if it is simply difficult?
Thanks for reading What is a Good Life?
3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - Trust, Water & Rewilding with Daniel Allen-Hörnfeldt - What is a Good Life? #179
Listen to or watch the full conversation with Daniel Allen-Hörnfeld below.
For Apple podcast click here.
About Me
I am a writer, facilitator, and podcast host, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 300 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.