I <3 radio

Oh. My. Gosh. I just listened to an amazing program on the radio. So thought provoking, so inspiring, such a punch to the stomach.


We have a marvelous tradition on Swedish radio called Sommar. It's a radio show broadcast daily during the summer and every day is hosted by different people how get to talk about whatever they like and play music of their own choice. Mostly it's celebrities ranging from scientists, musicians, athletes, politicians, authors, artists and others with a reputation in their profession. Nowadays you can listen to the program on the web or as podcast, so you don't need to put on the radio any specific hour of the day. I usually listen to the web version while doing stuff around the house. Sometimes the host is no one I know of, but I tend to listen anyway and mostly I don't regret it. The shows are often interesting, funny, inspiring and thought provoking. And you get to listen to a lot of really good music from many different genres.

Anyway, today I got to Raymond Ahlgren (who is the son of one of Salvador Allende's closest men, Paredes). In a very creative way, he told the story of his own transformation for the past few years, the things he'd learned and new perspectives he had gained on his life and living in general.

Among other things, he spoke about how procrastination creates a kind of loss of time and energy. He described how thoughts that are not carried through are littering our brains. All of those things undone are still in our thoughts and filling up mental space with anguish to get them done. He compared the human brain to a hard drive, that when becoming fragmented will be slowed down and working poorly. In the same way we become tiered and slowed down, loosing power to get on with our lives. A tool to overcome this that he'd used was to try decreasing the distance, in terms of time, between thought and action. I find that a very useful way of looking at it.

Another subject he spoke about was how many of us search to find a partner that will make us whole. He argued that if we're not whole ourselves we are likely to attract a partner that isn't either. Say that we are both half and thinking that together we will be one. Though, simple math shows that 0.5 x 0.5 equals 0.25. Even if one of us is whole it would be 1 x 0.5 = 0.5. So, his point being that instead of creating wholeness and energy, we will instead drain ourselves and become less than we were before. In other words, we can not expect anyone else to heal us or make us a whole person. We need to do that ourselves.

Now you're all wondering what's new about this? Well, nothing really. These are all things I believe most of us are well aware of. Still, it doesn't hurt to be reminded once in a while, and it's really inspiring to hear it put in an eloquent and concrete way. We all need inspiration and some new perspectives, no?

To end this post on a lighter note, I give you a picture of Bumblebee in her endearing little dragon jacket!