Less than a week from now, we will celebrate the anniversary of the Republic of Estonia and listen to speeches by the country's most senior officeholders — among whom, this time, there is not a single woman — about what is going well in our land and perhaps a little about what could be somewhat better.

This year, particular attention should certainly be paid to President Alar Karis's anniversary address, as it may be his last in that office, giving the head of state greater freedom than before to say what he truly thinks, for example, about the government and the Riigikogu.

It is possible that, even between the lines, we will be able to discern whether Karis intends to seek another term in the Riigikogu round of the presidential election at the beginning of September. It is also possible that we will not need to read between the lines at all as everything necessary may be stated outright by the president with the extraordinary — yet increasingly common — clarity of recent times. But it is even possible that the picture will instead be clarified by Prime Minister Kristen Michal in his speech on the evening of February 23.

Both the prime minister's and the president's speeches are therefore worth listening to closely this year, as in either case it would be a missed opportunity not to use the stage for clear messages rather than the all-too-familiar rounded metaphors. We will not have long to wait for these speeches, nor for the presidential election or the Riigikogu elections, which together form a single whole and the reality toward which Estonia will steer over the next four to five years.

One topic rarely dwelled upon in festive speeches is a field that concerns everyone — and indeed the state as a whole — and that is digestion. Digestion is the foundation of the vitality of our people and our country, both figuratively and literally.

After spending several hours cooking pea soup on Shrove Tuesday, only to eat it in about 15 minutes and then digest it for the next three days, my thoughts turned to the fact that most of our national dishes, prepared for certain anniversaries or folk calendar holidays, sit rather heavily on the stomach.

At Christmas we eat roast pork and mulgikapsad (sauerkraut stewed with pork lard and meat – ed.), which are, of course, delicious, but their digestion can truly last until Shrove Tuesday, when the aforementioned pea soup comes into play, along with cream buns (vastlakuklid). And so, from one holiday to the next, we eat, drink and digest until the year comes full circle again.

Digestion is not merely a matter of stomach troubles and bodily processes; it is directly reflected in other areas of life as well. Dissatisfaction with those very same national leaders whose speeches we listen to on Independence Day has become so commonplace that the negligible rating of the incumbent government should hardly come as a surprise, regardless of which parties make it up.

Nor is this merely some random symptom, but proof that all too often people feel that not only pork knuckle or pea soup sits in the stomach like a millstone, but that our state and its governance are also very hard to digest.

One wonders whether this is our national peculiarity. No one else forces us to eat what we eat or to elect those whom we elect. The local elections took place only a short time ago, yet already it appears that most voters cannot stomach those who were elected. Who told you to eat three bowls of soup in the evening and now you cannot fall asleep? Huh? Who told you to vote for those in the city council who, after winning, immediately forgot what they had promised before the election? Huh?

Thus, the suffering of the Estonian people is not simply linked to high electricity bills or to the Riigikogu passing a gambling law containing an error that initially costs the state around €1.5 million — and that truly only at first, as it may yet turn out that the entire legislative amendment was a mistake. These examples, and much else besides, result in our own state being hard to digest, even if we manage, with great effort, to swallow the daily influx of irritating news.

All of Estonia's and the entire world's troubles can be reduced to stomach troubles. If digestion is in order, then life as a whole is in order. And that is precisely why the traditional food on Independence Day has become open-faced sprat sandwiches and perhaps milk soup as well. These are light dishes and at least on Independence Day we need something that does not weigh down the stomach — or our entire being — so that we may have the strength to digest both our national dishes and our nation-state. Happy digesting!

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