BOY (again)

[00:00:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Hi, I'm Henrik.

[00:00:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And you are sleepy and it is what it is.

[00:00:37] [SPEAKER_00]: What happens?

[00:00:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Happens.

[00:00:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And right now there's nothing we can do about it.

[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Let's go.

[00:00:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Hi there, sleepy.

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I have received mixed reactions to me calling you sleepy.

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Some of you don't like it, some of you like it.

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_00]: But since we're still in the early face of this podcast,

[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_00]: presumed very long journey,

[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to do anything about it right now.

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to keep calling you sleepy until I get this

[00:01:22] [SPEAKER_00]: overwhelmingly clear feeling on which direction I should take this.

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_00]: So if you're new here, my name is Henrik Stoll.

[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm a boy.

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Some people say that I'm too old to refer to myself as a boy.

[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_00]: This is something I have an issue with my own aging.

[00:01:53] [SPEAKER_00]: I am, okay, I'm tearing up as we speak.

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_00]: This is actually, okay, so this started up very, very weird.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_00]: So now I'm crying in, like,

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_00]: what we haven't been at this for even one minute.

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, sorry everyone.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry sleepy.

[00:02:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so maybe I should, okay, so first of all,

[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_00]: if this is the first time you're listening to fall asleep with Henrik,

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_00]: this is normal.

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Stuff will happen here.

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I will just talk and the issue, the issue of the hour is that you are going to fall asleep or at least you don't have to listen.

[00:02:55] [SPEAKER_00]: You can do whatever you want.

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_00]: You can listen if you want but it's not necessarily something that you need to take action on.

[00:03:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Having a opinion on, just let me do the talking and you can just drift away.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_00]: So now I'm going to explain why I'm starting this episode with weeping.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm okay, really.

[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_00]: So first of all, before you rush to any conclusions about my mental well-being,

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_00]: I will be to do it and say that I'm fine.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_00]: It's okay.

[00:03:32] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just sometimes it's hard to accept that time you have is at least as far as I know,

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_00]: a limited time and I have so much I want to do.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And inside I am a boy.

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I truly am a boy.

[00:04:07] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not, well of course I know I am a man.

[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I have a family, I have a daughter, I have a career,

[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I have my own business.

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Of course I know that I'm a man that I'm a grown-up.

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not that I believe in a sense that I'm actually a child or something like that.

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not an idiot.

[00:04:41] [SPEAKER_00]: But when I look at myself, I can't look at myself from any other point of view.

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Then from that of the boy.

[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a boy.

[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_00]: I like to refer to myself as one, although I know that I am not.

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_00]: That I left my boyhood far behind somewhere.

[00:05:13] [SPEAKER_00]: This hasn't always been the case.

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I've spent many years trying to be the man, you know, trying to be well,

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_00]: maybe when I was a teenager, I looked at grown-ups and I thought to myself,

[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_00]: that this is how it's supposed to be.

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_00]: You're supposed to be this whirlwind of success and not thinking too much,

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_00]: just knowing everything being in total control and having this huge following

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_00]: of people worshipping your every move.

[00:06:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's how I viewed it in the past.

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's of course me being bullied in middle school, high school.

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_00]: It was some sort of a payback thing, I think.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_00]: But it never meant it never made me happy.

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_00]: I was, I wasn't very happy back then.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I, if I had asked myself myself then this question,

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_00]: are you happy?

[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I would have said like, yeah, I'm extremely happy.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Because things went well for that boy, that man.

[00:06:57] [SPEAKER_00]: But he didn't want to stop.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_00]: He just ran and while running, I think,

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_00]: looking back, I believe I missed so much of what makes life

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_00]: worthwhile.

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_00]: I had a problematic relationship with alcohol.

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I drank too much.

[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_00]: And while drunk, I was, well, I wasn't very true to myself.

[00:07:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I think every time I think back on my endeavors as a, as a drunk,

[00:07:43] [SPEAKER_00]: I, I get this overwhelmingly strong feeling of shame.

[00:07:54] [SPEAKER_00]: But if I'm going to look at it like from the outside,

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I was a very typical young man, I think.

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I, I have never been in a situation where I did anything criminal or anything

[00:08:10] [SPEAKER_00]: that really would race eyebrows.

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_00]: When I, when I mentioned my years of abuse to the, to friends who knew me at the time,

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_00]: they just say, well, you mean abuse, you were a happy drunk.

[00:08:25] [SPEAKER_00]: We all were like that.

[00:08:28] [SPEAKER_00]: But for me, this was like this bottomless pit of trying to search for love,

[00:08:37] [SPEAKER_00]: where no love was given.

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I tried to be someone I'm not, and I tried to be, well, I guess

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_00]: I tried to be like everyone else.

[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I thought everyone else were like.

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, that's it.

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_00]: An impossible endeavor you can't do that.

[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_00]: It's impossible.

[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's with sadness, I look back.

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, gratitude that I turn that around.

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't use alcohol anymore, not because I think that I really had a chemical.

[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Need for it as a substance.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_00]: But I don't think I am the type of person who should use heavier drugs like that,

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_00]: because there's something bottomless in me that needs to be forever maintained.

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_00]: If started, there's a meme circulating around the internet with the Gandalf saying

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_00]: that once this is started, there's no turning back or something like that.

[00:10:03] [SPEAKER_00]: And there's this, the meme is like after the first beer, after I took the first beer.

[00:10:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a laughing thing, but for me that was like real.

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_00]: When I had that beer, there was like this world opening up to me.

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_00]: A world where I was as successful actor and a person worthy of love and admiration, admiration.

[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And that was of course true even without alcohol, but I couldn't enjoy it at all.

[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I can't really enjoy success.

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_00]: That's not in my nature.

[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I can for like a minute and hour maybe I can enjoy something positive happening to me.

[00:11:03] [SPEAKER_00]: That fleeing, fleeing thing that you call success.

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_00]: But I can't for a long time.

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I can't prolong the feeling of being a success.

[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And but when drunk I could.

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_00]: So alcohol became important to me in that way.

[00:11:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I've spent a lot of years wasting my time.

[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_00]: That's my overall feeling.

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's I guess why I was sobbing in the beginning here because it's I turn 49 in a month.

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And some part of me thinks that it's too late for me to do what I've been wanting to all these years,

[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_00]: except I was just lost you know.

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_00]: So I have this feeling that I'm too late at the, I mean, I'm on the right track now, but I'm almost 50 and.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Life is not that long you know, and I think back at all the years I spent.

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Trying to be someone I'm not.

[00:12:31] [SPEAKER_00]: To be concrete, I tried to be a successful Swedish actor in all sense of the word.

[00:12:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I tried to be someone who landed film roles like regularly.

[00:12:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Someone who got invited to the right parties, someone who was written about in gossip magazines and stuff.

[00:12:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And I never went that way.

[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I went into Swedish children television and there's not much written about those actors.

[00:13:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And I enjoyed that very much and that was of course a very untrendy part of me.

[00:13:10] [SPEAKER_00]: So it was a double period.

[00:13:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I punished myself for not being a quote unquote real actor, but at the same time, I had this great time.

[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_00]: And spent all my money on taxi and alcohol and dry cleaning.

[00:13:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And this is a such a waste of my time.

[00:13:38] [SPEAKER_00]: If I just, if I just came up with those with the ideas that I have now like building my own universe,

[00:13:52] [SPEAKER_00]: really like building a nice, soft, comfortable and safe nest for yourself from within you can grow.

[00:14:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Do your own thing.

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_00]: If I'd only done that like 20 years ago, then maybe today I could like have room to fly you know?

[00:14:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Because right now I feel that I'm sort of stuck in fighting to reach my goal.

[00:14:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot of work involved like day-to-day grinding thing.

[00:14:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's of course something that prevents you from soaring, you know?

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I would like to have been able to stand on a mountain top by now looking out over a landscape and just deciding where to fly next.

[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe go down for a while into the valleys below and just dwell there for a while.

[00:15:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe go to another mountain or something, but right now I feel like I am at the mountain side.

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_00]: And that the sun is setting and I need to.

[00:15:33] [SPEAKER_00]: So, okay, sorry.

[00:15:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, but this is this is the deal with full sleep with Henryk. You get what you get. I don't, I don't.

[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:15:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well maybe this is good. I don't know. Maybe this is good content. I don't know.

[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Of course I did stuff as a young man that was my own.

[00:16:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I was part of building my own universe. I did stuff that back then as well, but then it was more like accidents.

[00:16:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Freak accidents. Like oops. I just created this thing. Okay. Maybe this is a good.

[00:16:18] [SPEAKER_00]: But please call me up and let me play a cup in this shitty movie. You know?

[00:16:28] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like the, the, the recent years. Like this past seven years maybe.

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe maybe fewer five years are the years that I've been really betting on myself by creating this universe around me that I could reach out into the void from you know?

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think everyone needs this not just people working with content that are full word content. Everything is content, you know?

[00:17:14] [SPEAKER_00]: But I'm not just people working in media or entertainment or whatever.

[00:17:23] [SPEAKER_00]: I think everyone needs it's essential to have a universe built around you that is yours. You can put anyone or anything in there.

[00:17:36] [SPEAKER_00]: But it's your universe. We are the only ones who have the key to our own universe. I think about this a lot.

[00:17:51] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's nothing really that makes me or you sleepy unique. We're not unique. We're people, you know?

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you're trying to, now if you're by hearing this, you're rushing out like of course I'm unique.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_00]: This listen to what this idiot podcaster is saying in his little container in Sweden.

[00:18:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Of course I'm unique. So listen, I'm, I'm going to come to a conclusion eventually. So bear with me. Okay.

[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_00]: So you are not unique. There's nothing unique about you in any common sense like the cells that divide in your body do the same thing that any other body,

[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_00]: that any other cell, that any other biological process are doing. You were a homo sapiens as I am and you have fears and lust and anger and love and hope and well everything that I have.

[00:19:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, my hope looks different from your hope and that other one that hopes in a certain way.

[00:19:17] [SPEAKER_00]: But it's still hope. So this is in a way a beautiful thing because there's so little really that if makes us different from each other even though we look different.

[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Our genomes are like almost identical to each other and this is why people are so susceptible humans are so susceptible to diseases for instance because we are very alike genetically.

[00:19:47] [SPEAKER_00]: If we were more different from each other maybe some of us would be like, we wouldn't be able to just take so much damage from for instance a worldwide pandemic.

[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_00]: So we are alike on a genetic level very, very much alike but then again this could be said about anything worldwide that's that have that in common that we are alive.

[00:20:20] [SPEAKER_00]: There's very little that if makes all living things different from each other. So I have like a whole lot of my genome.

[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I have a whole lot of my genomes is the same as that in Abanana for instance and so okay, so we're not unique from an outside perspective where like told to do the same.

[00:20:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Look at a bunch of bacteria in a microscope and you don't believe you don't think of them as individuals if you're not aiming to do just that.

[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_00]: You think about them as a bunch of bacteria.

[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's us that's every living thing because from the outside we're just dots, you know.

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_00]: But there's one thing that makes you truly unique and that is all in all the only thing worth mentioning when talking about uniqueness and that's that's your universe.

[00:21:30] [SPEAKER_00]: You are the only one who truly knows what it's like to be you.

[00:21:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean and that's so beautiful isn't it?

[00:21:42] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I mean what a privilege.

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And for me to even get a little glimpse of what that's like.

[00:21:57] [SPEAKER_00]: You can live, you can live like the most ordinary life but receiving like this little glimpse of what it's like to truly be you is a gift that could be like.

[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Should be treasured forever and you have the key to all of it.

[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And I had the key to my universe and maybe that's why I feel sad sometimes because I feel that I've been sort of pissing on my own.

[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_00]: And you're in a first sin away sorry for being vulgar.

[00:22:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I've been treating it like it was any other universe but it's not, it's my like my most sacred place.

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And then again I haven't been this absurdly wild person so I haven't been like with a syringe in my arm on a bench somewhere.

[00:23:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't been there you know.

[00:23:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't been in a fight.

[00:23:07] [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't like been this, I wanted to be though we have a lot of bad boys since we've reached the theater and I tried to be one.

[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I just don't have it in me.

[00:23:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I just don't have it in me to be this asshole but the most popular of us for many years.

[00:23:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Me too changed a lot of that and that was a great thing.

[00:23:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I believe it's of course there was this big turbulent time in Swedish theater.

[00:23:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean all over the world I guess because we had this ruling class of guys.

[00:23:55] [SPEAKER_00]: They all had like severe issues with alcohol and anger and they were the top kings, the top dogs and a lot of them got pinned down.

[00:24:05] [SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of them didn't, you know they just slipped away in the shadows and they're still there.

[00:24:13] [SPEAKER_00]: You know and of course they have all right in the world to be and exist and learn and grow and whatever.

[00:24:23] [SPEAKER_00]: But their power sort of got diminished and I think that's a good thing.

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm glad today that I never got let into that club.

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_00]: But I actually had friends that told me that you need to have like this scandal on your repertoire because everyone who's anything in this business acting business.

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Has a man that is any man that's anything in this business has like a scandal like being to drunk and ending up in a fight or crashing with your car or driving under the influence or.

[00:25:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Like having this very famous relationship and then being on faithful with another famous person something like that or being.

[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Arrested for drug possession and illegal drug or something.

[00:25:19] [SPEAKER_00]: But I never made it.

[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I never made that.

[00:25:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Instead I became this sad little boy to drunk in a corner of a club, you know.

[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's that was not what I saw myself as a kid and that was a few years, you know.

[00:25:50] [SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes I saw myself in a video the other day.

[00:25:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I recently did a recent video and.

[00:26:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I love myself, I do, I do, I love the vehicle that is me that's.

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Driving me around in the world.

[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_00]: But I don't like that.

[00:26:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this is kind of sound vain, but it's I feel too old.

[00:26:29] [SPEAKER_00]: It's over, that's what I feel like I'm over and I know this is wrong.

[00:26:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I know.

[00:26:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I know that there's no such thing as a.

[00:26:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Date when you should just stop certain things.

[00:26:46] [SPEAKER_00]: So this is a limitation in my own mind, I know that but it's still there.

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And I can only do so much with it and I sell my ears.

[00:27:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And there's this thin layer of wrinkles around my ears that I haven't seen before.

[00:27:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And they are telling me that.

[00:27:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Handkerke should really just be focused on learning how to sit still and remember stuff.

[00:27:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And waiting for her is your daughter to have kids of her own so that you can be a granddad and just be there with them, you know.

[00:27:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And you can just read and.

[00:27:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Take long walks and and just.

[00:27:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Be happy with what you've accomplished, you know.

[00:27:46] [SPEAKER_00]: And stop trying to.

[00:27:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Stop this stupid experiment of reaching out into the world with your podcast.

[00:27:57] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's so many Swedish media guys that I've tried this before.

[00:28:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Guys who have been reaching out to the English speaking world with their podcast or.

[00:28:12] [SPEAKER_00]: YouTube show or whatever and there's so many of them that just flopped because we don't.

[00:28:19] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just two different worlds, you know.

[00:28:26] [SPEAKER_00]: So why don't why don't you just.

[00:28:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Stay to yourself that enough is enough.

[00:28:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I remember like 10 years ago when my daughter was a baby we were this place in Valleberry, which is a town.

[00:28:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Close to Gothenburg on the West Coast in Sweden.

[00:28:45] [SPEAKER_00]: And we go there every summer because Nina's parents live there and.

[00:28:51] [SPEAKER_00]: There was this neighbor with by the cabin that we rented that was turning 50.

[00:29:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And this was 10 years ago my.

[00:29:04] [SPEAKER_00]: May I may I remind you.

[00:29:07] [SPEAKER_00]: 10 years ago and that's not so many years I was.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_00]: 39.

[00:29:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And I was.

[00:29:18] [SPEAKER_00]: By then, I guess I was sort of.

[00:29:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Desperate for roles acting roles.

[00:29:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I had this huge dip in my stream of roles that I landed and that made me feel like a.

[00:29:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, you know, you.

[00:29:35] [SPEAKER_00]: You see my life.

[00:29:38] [SPEAKER_00]: When you listen to it right now it feels like this long line of misery.

[00:29:42] [SPEAKER_00]: But it's not I'm sorry if I give you that impression.

[00:29:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, the thing I was going to tell you about was that this guy turning 50.

[00:29:52] [SPEAKER_00]: He had these long line of old.

[00:29:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Persons in it at a party at East Place and there was a really big party and everyone was really drunk.

[00:30:03] [SPEAKER_00]: And we weren't there, but we sat at our cabin having like evening tea.

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Listening to that party and we.

[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_00]: The overall feeling was that.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Listen to this old guys.

[00:30:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Parting like it's their youth.

[00:30:21] [SPEAKER_00]: It was like a tragic thing.

[00:30:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I thought of it as like really old people celebrating.

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And now it's my turn and I don't feel any different.

[00:30:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Like inside.

[00:30:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Except maybe for the happiness part because I'm happy now.

[00:30:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's very weird.

[00:30:47] [SPEAKER_00]: That's so weird to be the same age at that old guy 10 years ago.

[00:31:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Now I am this.

[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I'm not going to take deeper into this because I think that maybe it gives you the feeling that I need help in some way.

[00:31:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Or that I'm depressed or something like that.

[00:31:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry if I'm giving that impression actually this is still like.

[00:31:23] [SPEAKER_00]: The highlight of my life.

[00:31:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean talking to you doing this is so exciting.

[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And doing the Swedish equivalent of this podcast is also still like the center of my life and I love it.

[00:31:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I love my new endeavors.

[00:31:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I love my new mediums.

[00:31:43] [SPEAKER_00]: I love this new life that I've created for myself.

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I love being the father of a soon to be teenager.

[00:31:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I love to be like Nina's now stable man in a way.

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Boy, it feels very weird to say that I'm Nina's boy because I'm not.

[00:32:06] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not in that sense of we aren't married so I can't say wife.

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I can say like girlfriend but that sounds almost so infantile infantile.

[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_00]: But I can't say that she's my woman either because that sounds like I mean some sort of a, I don't know.

[00:32:33] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a different time period.

[00:32:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so Nina, my partner, that's a boring word as well.

[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, the woman I love and the mother of my child.

[00:32:52] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's, I am really in a good place.

[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just that sometimes this feeling is it just attacks you know from the shadows or maybe not the shadows but from deep within.

[00:33:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I hang out more and more with people younger than me.

[00:33:24] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a defense mechanism really.

[00:33:27] [SPEAKER_00]: I almost never meet people my own age or older anymore.

[00:33:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I used to do that a lot more when I was younger.

[00:33:38] [SPEAKER_00]: When I was way younger, I used to have a lot of friends like in their 70s and 80s.

[00:33:44] [SPEAKER_00]: We had like this actor community which there was a lot of senior people in it.

[00:33:52] [SPEAKER_00]: But well, they are of course dead or very, very old today and we don't sense I don't act so much anymore.

[00:34:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have any connection really with them anymore.

[00:34:05] [SPEAKER_00]: My connections nowadays are mainly with like my oldest friends which of course are in my own age.

[00:34:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And new friends that I've reached out to and connected with over social media.

[00:34:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And they are content creators tend to be content creators like me.

[00:34:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And they are old, they're all younger than me.

[00:34:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Like 10 and 20 years younger than me.

[00:34:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And I feel more like them than I feel like my own age.

[00:34:45] [SPEAKER_00]: And in my bad moments, I think of this as some sort of a midlife crisis thing.

[00:34:54] [SPEAKER_00]: But then I think, okay, but so what does it matter?

[00:35:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it would be a one thing if I were running around buying boats and cars.

[00:35:10] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, desperately trying to, I think went out in bars and desperately tried to impress the younger women or something.

[00:35:21] [SPEAKER_00]: But I don't, I just, I just hang out a lot with younger people.

[00:35:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Because sometimes I think there are more their lives are more in line with how I see my life.

[00:35:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And somehow I feel that I get more out of life discussing stuff with someone who is 39.

[00:35:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Then someone who is 69, I don't know.

[00:35:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Don't take offense if you're an older sleeping now.

[00:36:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't mean anything like this is not ageism or maybe it is.

[00:36:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.

[00:36:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know where anything.

[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_00]: I believe that being young is sort of a mindset.

[00:36:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Of course it is.

[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_00]: And now I don't know what I'm talking about and I'm the censorship comes rushing into my brain telling me to stop.

[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I have like two or three censorship people in my head,

[00:36:38] [SPEAKER_00]: and they are working their butts off right now trying to do damage control.

[00:36:44] [SPEAKER_00]: They're telling me that a few of you who are sleepy are actually older than me

[00:36:49] [SPEAKER_00]: and you shouldn't alienate yourself from them, they say.

[00:36:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And now they tell me to say that you need to, they are telling me to, to smoothen this smooth out it so that it doesn't get offensive.

[00:37:11] [SPEAKER_00]: So, but shut up critics censorship guys in my mind.

[00:37:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Let me speak from the heart.

[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_00]: This is what I do in this podcast.

[00:37:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I just say stuff, you know.

[00:37:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I think the main issue I have with getting older myself is that I know that in time my cognitive and physical abilities will decline.

[00:37:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And that is the thing that gives me the feeling of that I only have limited set of hours before it's too late, you know.

[00:37:51] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's the cognitive and physical decline that scares me, not wrinkles or white hair or wisdom or well maybe like stagnated views and a bitterness about society.

[00:38:08] [SPEAKER_00]: That's something that I see in my own parents.

[00:38:11] [SPEAKER_00]: That's, I think it scares me a lot because I don't want to be bitter.

[00:38:16] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to be locked to an idea and then spend the rest of my life just telling everybody that wants to listen how wrong the world is compared to when I was a kid or something.

[00:38:31] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to be that person.

[00:38:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so that's one thing.

[00:38:37] [SPEAKER_00]: So I love old people.

[00:38:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I love talking to old people.

[00:38:44] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have many of them in my life.

[00:38:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Right now that doesn't mean that I don't want to.

[00:38:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Right now I tend to talk to younger people because they enable me to.

[00:39:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I guess feel younger than I am, I don't know.

[00:39:11] [SPEAKER_00]: But it scares me that I'm going to be weak.

[00:39:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's what happens, you know.

[00:39:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Your muscles and your senses and I mean you could be lucky and you can have this way healthier old age than for instance my parents have.

[00:39:44] [SPEAKER_00]: But sooner or later this will hit, you know.

[00:39:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, I'm not doing a very good job in inducing coldness and sorry, I'm sorry.

[00:40:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, if I'm lucky, you're sleep right now anyway.

[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_00]: So you don't ever hear this and it's a last good.

[00:40:11] [SPEAKER_00]: That's fine.

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just a boy.

[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, maybe this was my worst episode ever.

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I started out by crying over my own age.

[00:40:28] [SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't mean that I'm crying over my age.

[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not the age.

[00:40:36] [SPEAKER_00]: It's the lost opportunities that time provided me with back then.

[00:40:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Everything is more concentrated now.

[00:40:48] [SPEAKER_00]: If life is a disease, I am now mid or even past mid disease and the disease is just you know.

[00:40:59] [SPEAKER_00]: You can live with it.

[00:41:00] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean what other choice do you have?

[00:41:03] [SPEAKER_00]: But it's, and I mean that the disease itself is an ever giving one.

[00:41:08] [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe it's not a disease.

[00:41:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's a gift.

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.

[00:41:13] [SPEAKER_00]: So no, I don't know what I'm talking about.

[00:41:16] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't, I am very fluffy in my head right now.

[00:41:23] [SPEAKER_00]: The words are just running around.

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody wants to take responsibility for what's been said at the moment.

[00:41:31] [SPEAKER_00]: The censorship guys are just you know, standing with their arms crossed, shaking their head.

[00:41:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I said me and I'm, I feel like I'm alone.

[00:41:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Now, no, nobody knows force or ideology or dog mind mind will take responsibility for what I'm saying.

[00:41:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And there's no clear plan, no clear path of where I'm going with anything really.

[00:42:05] [SPEAKER_00]: But then again, this is good because you are not meant to actively do something with my voice.

[00:42:17] [SPEAKER_00]: You can just fade away listen to me or not listen to me or listen for a while and then fade away again and thinking about your own stuff.

[00:42:29] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, God, you have a lot of stuff in your universe sleepy.

[00:42:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Your universe is like, that's why I believe that what we do here is somewhat meaningful because I give you parts of my universe and it's unfiltered and it's not thought through.

[00:42:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And I even if I want to sometimes, I don't ever plan.

[00:42:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't even, I don't ever edit or well as you can hear censor anything really that I say.

[00:43:10] [SPEAKER_00]: And this is like what I was talking about before that, you know, even the smallest slice of someone's genuine universe is worth more than any money.

[00:43:24] [SPEAKER_00]: So if you like, you can write to me. You can DM me on social media or you can write.

[00:43:33] [SPEAKER_00]: You can email me if you can find my all contacts and stuff on my webpage, kirinaya.com, kiri naya, kiri naja.com.

[00:43:47] [SPEAKER_00]: There you can reach out or you can DM me and any stuff from media and just give me a slice of your universe.

[00:43:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I would be really thrilled to get to know you a little bit, you are still a very small group of people.

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Every day I get like 200 people listening and the past month, I have received 14,000 listens.

[00:44:24] [SPEAKER_00]: This is way more than I expected in the beginning but this is just because I got very wonderfully promoted by yonayin'ton.

[00:44:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So thank you yonay if you're listening and it was, that's why I got this 14,000 listens.

[00:44:48] [SPEAKER_00]: But if I'm going to be realistic, this is maybe you are about around 1,000 people or something that's listening on a regular basis right now.

[00:45:06] [SPEAKER_00]: But I still don't know because it's so new everything, everything is so new but it's 1,000 persons humans.

[00:45:21] [SPEAKER_00]: So there's still time for me to get to know you like really see because one problem I have with my Swedish podcast,

[00:45:35] [SPEAKER_00]: which has like 200,000 individuals listening every day.

[00:45:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Now 200,000 individuals per month that is like 500,000 listens each month.

[00:45:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's a lot and I don't, well some of them that was early, that was with me from an early stage.

[00:46:07] [SPEAKER_00]: I feel I know them but it's hard for me to individually read and take in everything I try, but it's harder.

[00:46:24] [SPEAKER_00]: So in English since we're so few, there's still a great opportunity for me to get to know you.

[00:46:33] [SPEAKER_00]: So if you want, write me and tell me a bit about yourself, tell me about your life, tell me about how you use the podcast, tell me about what you like or what you don't like with it.

[00:46:48] [SPEAKER_00]: But most of all I'm interested in getting to know you like who you are, where you live, what you do.

[00:46:58] [SPEAKER_00]: How you go through life, I am looking for this ever so small slice of your own universe that is the only thing that makes you truly unique in our huge vastly expanding common space.

[00:47:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Which is what we call the universe, but it's a bit unfair to call our common space universe because it's a philosophical impossibility to talk about this a lot in my Swedish podcast.

[00:47:41] [SPEAKER_00]: It's philosophically impossible to talk about our common space as the universe because the universe has like as soon as you mention it in terms of this is the universe.

[00:48:03] [SPEAKER_00]: And if by the universe you mean something that contains everything there is, then the whole concept gets turned inside out because it's impossible to watch something from the outside which contains everything.

[00:48:24] [SPEAKER_00]: But it gets easier if you say that this universe contains me, this is my universe.

[00:48:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Then the universe becomes something that you can work with in terms of like using it as an image or as a concept in my universe these rules apply.

[00:48:44] [SPEAKER_00]: But if we talk about our common space and by common space I mean like what we truly call the universe space around us, the ever expanding space.

[00:48:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Our solar system interstellar space galaxies that is something completely different because as soon as you call it as soon as you give it a name, you lock it into existence and as soon as the name claims to be a name of a container that contains everything there is.

[00:49:28] [SPEAKER_00]: It becomes unable to talk about because how can you watch describe, discuss something that contains everything without looking at it from the outside.

[00:49:42] [SPEAKER_00]: You can't. So then the only conclusion that you have to make that then is that the universe doesn't exist at least in that sense.

[00:49:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So the universe is a very limited word. You should really be just use it about containers that you can fit in your mind because the universe then if we're talking about the ever expanding vastly ever grow in all containing universe, then universe, the universe contains like everything that doesn't exist as well.

[00:50:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Because as soon as you mention it or think it or someone else mentions it or think it or somewhere somewhere out of the place in this container we call the universe.

[00:50:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Something starts to exist it exists, you know so who's to say what's existent and what's not because this was really.

[00:50:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Messy wasn't it.

[00:51:05] [SPEAKER_00]: As I've been speaking, I have like crunched my knuckles.

[00:51:12] [SPEAKER_00]: You haven't heard it because there's no noise. I have a noise protected. I have sound isolated knuckles.

[00:51:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I guess I became nervous when I started to potentially alienate myself from older listeners that was not.

[00:51:31] [SPEAKER_00]: I repeat that was not my intention, but I truly feel that the mind of some of the younger people I meet are so inspiring and truly educating for me.

[00:51:56] [SPEAKER_00]: That's something I can stand behind at least. But I'm sad because my parents are well, it's sometimes like they belong to a different world and I miss them in my world.

[00:52:20] [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard for me to change world every time I go and visit them.

[00:52:26] [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard for me to.

[00:52:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it's sometimes feel like I have to go into this little playhouse, you know when I'm on a playground somewhere.

[00:52:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I have to not not indicating that my parents' lives are like play lives or anything. It's just an image.

[00:52:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I go to playground and I go into this one of these little playhouses, maybe with a slide on top of it or something.

[00:52:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And in there in the dark is my parents and they are like, they don't want to really be there. It's just they don't know how to get out of the little house.

[00:53:12] [SPEAKER_00]: So they're just in there and they feel left out. They feel that society has out run them abandoned them in a way. And in so many ways it has.

[00:53:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Especially digitally. I don't know about other countries but in Sweden, I feel like the digital transformation in society has to a very big degree left elder people out and the project that aims to educate older people in how to interact digitally has been.

[00:54:03] [SPEAKER_00]: It's been done by private operators and private citizens. You know it's very we have like a few small projects from the government that's aimed to get everyone on the train but it's not it doesn't suffice.

[00:54:27] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not enough and that's partly the reason why my parents are feeling left out but also it's a mindset thing.

[00:54:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I could ever live in the world if I didn't get to be a part of it.

[00:54:48] [SPEAKER_00]: If I didn't feel that I at least was a bit curious about what's going on. But I see this in my own age group as well. I see that this lack of curiosity is like slowly killing people.

[00:55:05] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a very sad thing to see that people in even in my age or maybe younger are like sitting in a bar talking about the stupid kids with their TikTok.

[00:55:30] [SPEAKER_00]: That mindset doesn't change anything or it doesn't make anything better. Not for the kids with their TikTok and not for you, especially not for you.

[00:55:43] [SPEAKER_00]: With your sawge old beer and your sawge old bar talking about the past. I love TikTok. I hate TikTok.

[00:55:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I love the world, I hate the world. It's complex you know.

[00:56:06] [SPEAKER_00]: But then again, the only thing that you truly have responsibility over is your own universe. That's the only thing that you can really truly change or adapt within. So you need to love that.

[00:56:24] [SPEAKER_00]: I need to love that. No matter my age, so now I regret this whole episode. I regret me winding about my old.

[00:56:39] [SPEAKER_00]: My age. I regret me winding about how I lost so many years. So what? I'm still here. There are people my age that still hasn't landed, you know. And maybe when I'm 60, I will think what was I doing when I was 50. Why couldn't I have just settled down and trying to be a grand ad eventually.

[00:57:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. We never know anything really. Everything changes. It happens in an instant. You're almost never prepared. And it is what it is. What happens happens. And right now there's nothing we can do about it. Good night sleepy.