My Cold Core (CC)

[00:00:00] Hi Sleepy, just a very quick note before we start today's episode. Do you want to listen to this podcast without the ads? Then you absolutely can. Just subscribe to Fall Asleep with Henrik Plus and to do so you can just click the link in the podcast description and it'll be fixed. See you there.

[00:00:24] Hi and welcome to Fall Asleep with Henrik. I'm Henrik and you're sleepy and it is what it is. What happens happens and right now there is nothing we can do and let's go. Hi Sleepy. Hi. So I am back in Adventure Wolf, my studio.

[00:01:02] In my yard. In my old yard. The studio is still here. I'm still here. Today the lights in my studio are bluish in color and I am totally ice cold.

[00:01:31] My feet and my hands are freezing. It's minus degrees outside. I don't know how much, how low, but it's cold and I'm...

[00:01:46] Every winter I'm freezing. Especially in this house. It's like the floor is amplifying the coldness of the rock beneath the house and transferring it up through the floor and into my feet and into my body.

[00:02:15] And sometimes during winter it feels like I have this core of solid coldness inside me like this, you know, perm frost thing going on.

[00:02:35] And it manifests itself within me throughout the day.

[00:02:46] And when I go to bed at night, sometimes, I feel this coldness and I get overwhelmed by this feeling that this solid core of frozen whatever it is inside of me will never be totally... Evaporated. It will never be... Evaporated. It will never be... I will never be warm enough for that to disappear.

[00:03:15] Evaporated. But then everything changes and I fall asleep and when I wake up in the morning, I am, you know, I am warm all the way through.

[00:03:27] And I wish it could be... I wish there would... I wish there was a way for me to experience that feeling without having to sleep and return to my, you know, baseline rhythm-wise, inner rhythm-wise.

[00:03:50] I wish I could just press a button and then my inner warm serenity would manifest itself. Well, I'm exaggerating a bit because sometimes I don't even think about my cold core. My CC, I call it. Excuse me, I'm going to indulge myself in my CC for a while.

[00:04:20] And by that, I mean, I'm going to talk a lot about my cold core. If I could travel there, if I could go there in person, I believe I could do things to ease the burden of the cold core. I believe I could, you know, maybe plant small, individually totally insignificant beacons of warmth.

[00:04:50] But together they could really make a difference, I think. Maybe I could slowly spread this fine-masked web of warmth. First, it wouldn't even be visible or noticeable because the core is so frozen solid.

[00:05:16] But if I gave it time and had patience, the warmth of these individually very small beacons would create this sort of a field of warmth,

[00:05:44] slowly covering the surface of this cold lump, you know. And then the ground, the surface of my cold core would loosen up a bit, be a bit squishy, soft. And then I would know that I was on the right track.

[00:06:10] And then slowly, gradually over time, the core would just evaporate, turn into gas. And leaving just, you know, emptiness. And I can't imagine the joy I would experience from making that happen myself.

[00:06:40] And imagine putting it into, like, a method of some sort, a way of doing it, that I would gradually be better at it over time. And eventually this would just take, like, 20 minutes each day from frozen cold core FCC.

[00:07:13] The FCC won't let me be. Let me be me. And that's a shame, isn't it? Hi, by the way. I'm sorry if you're a new listener to this podcast, then this demands some explanation, I guess. My name is Henrik. I'm from Sweden.

[00:07:40] I am normally doing this podcast in Swedish. And since a year back, I've been trying to make this habit of mine of improvising and speaking, just letting the words out from my mind without censoring or editing anything or writing anything down. I've been doing it also in English.

[00:08:09] And as it turned out, it was quite a good idea. There are now well a few thousand people worldwide who listen to this podcast and use it either way they see fit. They fall asleep to it, as is the main goal. I mean, at least as far as what I'm trying to use as a USP, a unique selling point goes.

[00:08:39] I mean, you have to describe the stuff you do so that people can tune in. But with that said, this podcast is a lot more. You can use it like any way you want. Some people listen to the whole episodes because for some reason they think that I'm entertaining and calming to listen to.

[00:09:04] And other people just listen and fall asleep like after 15 minutes. And as I said, I make a living out of doing this in Swedish. But it's different. It's different. It's different in English because I have to use other parts of my brain to do the improvising and also doing all the talking because it's. Well, that's mainly what I do here.

[00:09:34] Talk. So the episodes can go either way, really. I can talk about absolutely anything. I'm not choosing topics out of, you know, I need to pick themes that are soothing or calming or. I talk about almost everything, including stuff that people may find non-relaxing.

[00:10:05] Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I clear my throat. I am not a relaxation guide. I am not a self-help teacher. I don't know anything about sleep, really, other than distraction seems to work. So maybe distraction is my thing.

[00:10:33] But while I'm doing this, it's not as if I'm trying to distract you or anything. Right now, I'm in this state of just flow. And that's the wonderful part. And that's the reason I can keep doing this, I guess, because it's. Yeah. Because I enjoy that.

[00:11:02] Even if I didn't record myself. I. I enjoy this. This is some form of meditation for me. I meet pages in my own book that I haven't written or read. Or I didn't even know that I. I didn't even know that I had them, you know, the pages.

[00:11:30] For instance, right now it's weird. Because I am speaking in a language that is not mine. I mean, I've spoken a lot of English of my years. I was born in 1975 and I started learning English in third grade. So I was nine. So it's 40 years ago I learned my first English language.

[00:12:01] My first English words, I would say. And I mean, as you are in the world, you are constantly bombarded with culture from, well, especially the US. And so English is like this part of your world. But it's another thing to just speak your mind using that language.

[00:12:28] And even harder way to speak your mind but doing it unprepared. That's... And making it genuine and honest and, well, sometimes entertaining or whatever. So it's an exciting thing for me. And I'm so glad that so many of you have found this already.

[00:12:58] It's... It's... Well, it's a true honor to have you sleepy from, like, across the world in a place. I think there are, like, a hundred countries now listening. People from a hundred countries listening to me. Well, in some of these countries there are, like, one or two people listening. And in some countries there are the main part of the listeners.

[00:13:26] But it's still such a thrill to look at my little analytics map and see from where you are listening. Feel free to write to me and tell me what you think about this. How you use my podcast. And if you like it, write me a review on any of the platforms that you use while listening to this podcast. And tell your friends about me.

[00:13:57] Then we can make this little society of sleepies. That would be great. So, I get a lot of questions about me and my life here in Sweden. And I know there are a lot of my Swedish original listeners tuning in to fall asleep with Henrik.

[00:14:25] And that's, I mean, that's great. So, if you're Swedish, then you know about me from, like, seven years back of me talking about myself. But in case you don't know me, then, okay, so here's my story. I am Henrik Stål. I am 49 years old.

[00:14:52] I was born on this very warm summer morning in the end of July 1975. And my mother and my father, they were 24 and 30. My mother being the younger of the two, as is custom, I guess.

[00:15:20] I think that's the most common combination, isn't it? That the woman is younger than the man, I guess. Anyway, I don't know any about that. By the way, you should never take anything I say for granted. You should, I can come up with stuff on the fly or I could just be wrong. And sometimes I might be right.

[00:15:46] So, don't quote me on stuff that I say here, unless it's for entertaining purposes. Okay? So, there was this extremely warm morning. And my dad, because he's the one who has been telling me this story, he was, well, as you are,

[00:16:11] when having your first born, in a very strange place in his mind. His wife, my mother, she were in pain, of course. And she had turned out to be like this very avid pain.

[00:16:39] She was an avid pain communicator to use like made up language. She had turned into some sort of a screaming monster. My dad was shocked because he, as far as he's told me, he never saw that side of her.

[00:17:06] But of course, the pain transformed her into this, well, a pain, a very avid pain communicator. So, they were in a cab. This is in the southwestern part of Sweden. And they had to go to another city called Lidköping to the hospital there. And they traveled by cab.

[00:17:34] And in the cab, the cab driver was like, didn't really paying attention to that. The fact that my mother was about to give birth. So, he just talked and talked and talked about his own life and his own discomfort of being a cab driver. And that he really hated people that weren't from the city of Lidköping.

[00:18:03] He claimed that everyone who wasn't from Lidköping, which none of my parents were, by the way. My dad was from a neighboring town and my mom was from way up north compared to that city. And, but he said that everyone who wasn't from the neighborhood were like foreigners who should be really cast out.

[00:18:25] And this was a unique view since, you know, he, I mean, why, you know? Anyway, so, he was a pain in the ass, to put it frank. And then they arrived to the hospital and there my mother screamed and twisted.

[00:18:55] And she ripped the handles that were attached to the bed. At that time, giving birth wasn't such a flexible thing as it is now. I mean, when we, when I, when my daughter came into this world, it was sort of like the mother's state

[00:19:22] in all sorts of ways, determined how and where and if the child were to be delivered, you know? How do you want to do this? Do you want to like squat? Do you want to be on your back? Do you want to, it's like whatever's comfortable and necessary at the time, you know? But at that time, I guess that my mom was like, you know, just lay here and wait, you know,

[00:19:50] and try to behave yourself because the nurse, when my mother ripped the handles of the bed because she was in such pain, then, then the nurse told her that she was hysteric. Which of course, who wouldn't be, you know, having that kind of pain? It's old school, you know? Behave yourself. It's only giving birth.

[00:20:21] Millions of women have done so before you. And do you think you're the first one to squeeze out a child through this minimal opening in your body? Anyway, I came with some sort of hesitance.

[00:20:43] I got stuck halfway out and they had to use this sucking device. I don't have a better word for it, but it's some sort of a device that is, you know, vacuum, vacuum. It's vacuum in it. So it sucks on to the kid's head and then you could just pull it out. So they did that to me.

[00:21:12] And that led to that my head were misshaped and stayed that way for a few days. So the first thing, since this is my father's story, really, my mom don't really have any stories from the actual process of me being birthed. Born, being born. Rather after.

[00:21:43] And I'm going to tell that story too. But it's not so funny. It's more like, it's a love story. But my dad's story is fun and also poetic in a way. And so he saw me and he saw this very weird alien-like cone-shaped head.

[00:22:09] And this changed girl who was his wife who just suddenly had turned into like this loudspeaker of pain. And he was shocked. He was 30 years old and he's a very timid man. And I think that he really, he got really scared, I think. And then he had to go home.

[00:22:41] Because he couldn't stay at the hospital because he was the dad. And I mean, just a few years before my birth, it was very uncommon for the father to even be present in the room. The dad had like a cigar. And he was walking around outside waiting for the scream and the nurse to come out and tell him that it's a boy. All this good.

[00:23:09] But my dad was in there and he was. And of course, I mean, just seeing a birth is an overwhelming feeling. And I guess it was somewhat of a traumatic experience for him, I think. So knowing him and that being his first child, he then went on to get six children in total. So I guess he got used to it.

[00:23:38] But I was, I was the first. So, and he, then he had to go home. He just had to leave me there with my mom. And then, I don't know for what reason, but he didn't take a cab back. I guess the racist taxi driver on the way there was too much for him. So he had to wait for a bus. And I think like it was like a couple of hours by bus.

[00:24:09] And so it was an early morning, the 31st of August. No, the 31st of July, 1975. And it was extremely warm, uncommonly warm for that time of year, although it was summer. And everything was closed and the city was silent.

[00:24:33] And it was a few hours, I think, until the bus should depart. So he ate a sandwich at some open, early open coffee shop. And it didn't taste anything, he told me. It was like eating air. And he sat there.

[00:25:01] I imagine, I don't know if this is the case, but I imagine him sitting there on, like, outside of the shop. On this, at this little cafe table. Watching the city come to life, early morning. Seventies.

[00:25:23] People with long hair and wide jeans at the bottom. And beard and tinted sunglasses. And just sitting there and trying to fathom whatever had been going on for the last few hours.

[00:25:50] So now I'm going to pause and just tell my mother's short story. The only thing she's ever told about my birth. When I came out and when they put me on her chest, she said, look, it's a Henrik. So she knew that I was a Henrik.

[00:26:20] And this was news to my father because he had been saying for a long while that he wanted me to be called Gunlaug. Which is a very uncommon name in Sweden. It's not like every other boy at that time was named Gunlaug. I think it's a German name or maybe it's an Icelandic name, Gunlaugur.

[00:26:47] But my mom said I was a Henrik and that was it. So that was my mother's story. It's a very short story, but it gives me a comfy feeling because it's like she saw me right away. This has, of course, had its ups and downs over the years.

[00:27:16] I mean, being that scene is a good thing, but it's also, it can be also very harmful, I think. To be, well, it's a way of control, you know. So I'm glad that my mom over my childhood really saw me.

[00:27:39] But at the other side of that, I am not so glad because I've had to fight for my privacy. And now look at me sitting here, talking, spilling my life for thousands of people all around the world. Anyway, I love that, by the way. I love this, you know.

[00:28:05] I know it's a one-way communication, but it's also very giving. Because I imagine you, you know, whomever you are, I imagine you listening, telling me stuff back, thinking stuff, having opinions and getting impulses from what I talk about.

[00:28:30] Anyway, my dad went on the bus, got on the bus. And at that bus, there were a bunch of senior citizens who were going on a, like, a field trip or something. Maybe they were in this service home or something. And a retirement home, and they were going for a field trip. Or it was some sort of club that was going to an excavation or something.

[00:29:02] Anyway. Expedition, excavation. That's another thing, right? Excavation is something you do when you dig up old bones. So they were going on an expedition. I don't know. The only thing my dad told me is that he had a headache and it was very warm. And he were filled with these existential thoughts. Some of them were probably not that nice.

[00:29:30] I mean, why did my wife scream and fought and ripped the metal handles of the bed? Why haven't I seen this side of her before? Remember that he's 30 years old and he's never been in this type of situation before. Of course, he knew that giving birth is a painful thing.

[00:29:56] But maybe he had this idea that it would be like Mother Mary giving birth to Jesus. Like this epiphany moment where everything that happens feels right. But if you've been in a situation like that, which you probably have some point in your life, then you know that it's not a peaceful, dignified situation.

[00:30:20] It's life in all its absurdity and pain and fear and also joy and ecstasy. Anyway, so he got very disturbed by these senior citizens because they were talking very loud and they were very worried about getting off at the right place.

[00:30:44] So they took turns going up to the stumbling. The bus was moving on small roads. I guess he got car sick or something and the senior citizens took turns stumbling up to the driver and asked him if they, that he was sure he would drop them off at the right place for wherever they were going to go.

[00:31:13] And he had told me that he thought that if I'm ever going to kill someone, this would be the time and place and object of killing. Because he felt that they deprived him of this existential deep moment.

[00:31:35] My dad, I am like him in that way that I need to process things and I need to do it alone and I need to have peace. I am very sensitive to when stuff are being demanded of me while I need to process things. I guess I'm high sensitive in that case that I need. I am very sensitive to stimuli. Stimuli. Stimuli. What do you say? Stimuli.

[00:32:06] Stimuli. Stimuli. Anyway, so anyway, they got off and he got off and I think he had to change to another bus, another route or something to get home. And then he got home and to Vara, which was the city where he lived and his mother lived. And so he went to my grandma and he told her that you're a grandma.

[00:32:34] And my grandma, which was like this very somber person. She was, I have very few memories of her because I was six years old when she died. She was old when she got my dad and she had been fighting depressions throughout her life.

[00:32:52] And she was a, as I remember, she was a wonderful, funny, exotic person who came into our house and sang and told us different, weird, old rhymes from another time. You know, she was born in 1905. So she was like this ancient relic.

[00:33:19] You know, I remember feeling her cheeks, her chin, and it was wrinkled in a way that I had never felt because she was not like my mother's mother who was young when she got my mom.

[00:33:39] My grandmother was like, my mother's mother was like 45 when I was born or something younger than I am now. So yeah, anyway, I, I, I loved her, but I never really got to know her. But as, as, as I've been told, she was difficult sometimes.

[00:34:06] She had mood swings and a dark mind. And, but she was very happy that, that I was born. And she asked all, all the common questions, how much I weighed, how long it took, how my mother was, stuff like that.

[00:34:29] And my dad told him, told her, and then she's, then he said, now I'm going to go home and I'm going to take the dogs out because they had two border collies at the time. And I'm going to take them out. And I'm going to have a cigar and a whiskey. Because he had read somewhere that that's what dads should do when they had, had a child.

[00:34:56] And so he had this urge for whiskey and a cigar. And then my grandma said, well, can I join you? I want a cigar and whiskey as well. And my dad said, no, no, I want to be alone in this experience. I want to do this alone.

[00:35:19] And then my grandma said something in the terms of, well, then why don't you go and fuck yourself and then slam the door right in his face. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[00:35:35] But it's, I mean, it's, I mean, talk about, you know, great happenings in your life, you know, milestones. You know, you're first born. You're a father now. Everything has changed. Yet at this very moment, nothing has changed.

[00:36:01] And I mean, that situation when my grandma just being, you know, my grandma just being my grandma. Because that was the way she were. It wasn't something uncommon, I guess. She didn't like my mom. She, she, she thought that my dad took, my mom took my dad away from her. So she was very cold to my mom in the beginning.

[00:36:30] And yeah, so, so she was like, she had a dark mind. And she had a dark conception. Like she was, she was this, um, I remember her in like dark clothes and her eyes were almost black and her hair was like a raven. And she was very pale.

[00:37:00] And yeah. And she was an artist as well. She was, she played piano. And she was in a band and she was touring the countryside in the early 1900s. And playing with my grandpa in different places. And she got paid so much more than my granddad and the rest of the band, which were all boys. I don't know why.

[00:37:28] She was the piano player and the, the other guys were playing other different instruments. I don't know if piano came with a higher rate or something. Anyway, I think it's a beautiful thing. I, I, I always think of it, this story as this beautiful moment because it's so non, it's not, you know, it's not conformity.

[00:37:58] It, it, the story breaks, you know, because seeing your first born or seeing any child of yours being born is, you know, if you would tell it to someone, you would tell either a horror story or, well, more, more preferably this fantastic story. I had this colleague of mine in a, in a, in a, in a theater there where I worked and he told me about his daughter being born.

[00:38:27] And when they put her in his arms and her eyes locked onto his, he was like hit by this truck of love as he described it. Uh, just from that one look, he know, he knew that he was lost, you know, in those eyes, in this little person for the rest of his existence.

[00:38:54] And that's, that's, that's, you know, that's the story that you hear and, and story that you measure your own experience with too, you know, and I don't think so many, too many people have that sort of pure experience in anything in life.

[00:39:15] Experiences are frustratingly so very mixed, you know, and as soon as you have this pure thing to compare it with, like someone who's told you that first time I held my daughter, I just got overwhelmed by love. And then it mixes up your situation even more.

[00:39:40] That's why I, back in the day, I enjoyed drinking because drinking really makes everything more one way. A good thing is a good thing. A bad thing is a bad thing, you know, that's why I also gave that up because I don't really want to live in a world which is one way.

[00:40:10] I think I am really allergic to one way stories and one way narratives because there's not, there is no such thing. Everything is at least two different things. And most of the time, everything is like this billion pieces of stuff that we put together.

[00:40:38] We tend to put things together because we need that in order to get a sense of what's going on. But if you, if we don't do that, nothing really connects, you know, everything is its own thing. And everything exists simultaneously. What do you say? Simultaneously. Simultaneously.

[00:41:06] Yeah, well, anyway, my dad went home to the house, I think, where he lived with my mom at the time for a very short period. And then they moved up to my mom's birthplace in Falun. And he got a bit drunk.

[00:41:36] What do you say? Tipsy. He got tipsy and he walked the dogs. And the summer was in extravagant bloom. And I can imagine him, my dad and his 30-year-old senses, which were now fumbling in the dark to find an explanation, a model, you know, to build this experience on.

[00:42:07] But he had nothing. And everything was the same. But everything was changed. And from that day, like everything in his life and my mom's life really changed.

[00:42:27] And I think, yeah, I tear up a bit now when I'm talking about it because it's beautiful to think about that moment as if we were like an eternity. My dad on this field around his birthplace in southwest Sweden. And it's the middle of the 70s.

[00:42:57] You know, people are protesting the Vietnam War. No. I don't know. When did the Vietnam War came to stop? Okay. So this is one of the points where I'm just making a fool out of myself because I don't really remember. Because I was a baby. Anyway. They had a friend who was this American deserter. And he played violin for me.

[00:43:26] One warm summer day when I was a baby. And they had that picture of me and this soldier. He wasn't a soldier at the time. He was this hippie guy. This is a bit too late for the hippies, though. But some of my mom and dad's friends at the time were like pure hippies.

[00:43:51] And he, as I remember him, there's this hippie guy and he's standing on one knee in front of me. I'm sitting in the grass on this great field. And he's bending down and he's playing right in my face with the violin. And I see him flabbergasted. And my parents had that photo in central places when I was growing up. So I saw it over and over and over again.

[00:44:18] And they always told me that you really loved him playing the violin for you. And that resulted in that by the time I got to third grade and got to choose an instrument, I chose violin just because that old Vietnam deserter had played the violin for me that very one time.

[00:44:47] He wasn't a part of our lives or anything. I don't remember him at all. And yeah, they always told a story about him being a deserter to be something like this very noble thing.

[00:45:09] That would be interesting to talk more about in the context of today. You know, like the atmosphere of the overall world today. At that time in Sweden, everyone was like anti-violence. I think that has changed.

[00:45:37] And it would be interesting to have that sort of discussion with the premises of today. And suing it together with the 70s and 60s. Anyway, I revere the moments that have been told to me.

[00:46:08] I revere my mom and dad at that particular time. I mean, I feel such high regard and deep love for the two people that they were before all of this started.

[00:46:29] It's beautiful to think about the inexperience and, you know, and not inexperience in a negative way, because how could you have experience of something that you haven't started yet? It's something very giving to think about the start of a journey, you know? Because what came is like this mix, like everything is.

[00:46:58] A mix of great experiences, huge life journeys, but also great tragedy, you know? Four years after that moment, my sister was born with this very serious heart disease.

[00:47:23] And she almost died then and there, but she made it. And she's still here with us today. But she, if she were to be born like a few years earlier, she wouldn't have made it. She was a so-called blue baby.

[00:47:46] So she didn't get enough oxygen from her heart via the blood. And so that was the first. And then my brother was born two years after that with a very severe hearing loss and also a kidney failure that threatened his life.

[00:48:10] And then there were these psychological issues with my mom and my dad got a brain, got a stroke. And then my even younger brother got a brain tumor. And so, you know, all that.

[00:48:30] And I'm saying this laughing because, sorry, but this is the part, you know, remember the part where I told you that sometimes I tell you things that might not be sleeping material. And that's fine, you know, because that's life. At least as far as I'm concerned. I'm concerned. So everyone is alive and everyone is well.

[00:48:56] And, yeah, and now they're almost 80, my mom and dad. And, yeah, then I tear up when I think about that morning, you know. And I'm not saying that the children, them having children was the catalyst behind a lot of suffering. Although, I mean, it was, but it's not the children per se.

[00:49:26] That is the reason, I guess, it's life in all. They could have done almost anything and they would still encounter suffering, of course. I don't think they would have stayed together if they didn't have us. Rumor has it that they were talking about divorce when I was four.

[00:49:53] And then my sister was born and then, you know, you can't just, that's stitched them together in a way. And since then they've been unseparable. And that's been, well, nice. But also, like, totally suffocating in a way.

[00:50:20] Because I couldn't just go to my dad and just do stuff with him. Or I couldn't just go to my mom and that could be, you know, a mother-son thing. It was like they were one, you know. And sometimes I miss having the duality of two different persons because they were, you know. But it's like they gave that up. Manifesting that they are two different persons because they are so different.

[00:50:52] And today that starts to slip through the cracks. And it's like their own corkiness and weirdness. Their own individual weirdness is starting to show because they don't have, like, the strength to keep it between the two of them. And that's kind of funny.

[00:51:27] And it's very, very nice to think about the two of them being 24 and 30.

[00:51:38] When I was home, when I was at my parents' place the other day, they told me that because my sister's daughter, she's, my sister, she, they told her because of her heart condition that she would never be able to give birth. But she did, you know, anyway. And I really admire her. She's always done stuff that are, the doctors say are impossible. And she's done it.

[00:52:07] And she's still very affected by her disease, her condition, let's say, condition. But she got that daughter. And that girl is now a woman. And she's 24 years old. And she's at the same age that my mother was when she gave birth to me.

[00:52:31] And her man is at the same age that my dad was when I was born. And now they, in their turn, are having a baby. And that makes me so glad.

[00:52:55] And I, well, first of all, I'm longing for a new baby. I mean, it was, my daughter is 13 years old now. She's not a baby. I miss, you know, walking around with a baby. It was a, it was a feeling that I miss. And, but still, it wouldn't be my baby. And that would be a great relief as well.

[00:53:23] Because I, as I remember it, you know, the early years is that, I mean, love, yeah. But not in a clean way that my friend told me about that truck of love just hitting him. It's more like this weird mix of fear and love and anger and sorrow and, and stress.

[00:53:50] And, well, it's, it's, it's a weird combination of all these feelings. And it's like you're not allowed to talk about that because then people think that you're, you're, you have a defect, you know, in your emotional system or something.

[00:54:15] I remember sitting with my daughter in the lap or in my arms and I made this, she was only a few days old. And I made this Facebook update where I wrote the poem about the extremely ungraspable feeling that it meant to have this child.

[00:54:40] Like, it felt like I was being sent to heaven, but being in heaven in a cage, you know. So, I get to see all these wonderful things and smell all these wonderful smells and listen to this beautiful music that is in heaven. But I was locked in, in this cage, uncomfortable and cold cage.

[00:55:10] And it was very weird. I couldn't really find ways to just be in the moment. And I wrote something about that. And then so many people wrote as comments, like, put down your screen, you know, just stay in that moment with your daughter.

[00:55:34] Just, just, it's, it's unhealthy for you to be able to do Facebooking now at the time when your daughter is born. Put down the screen. Insinuating that I was constantly on digital media instead of being there with my daughter, you know. It's so weird that, that dualism. No, it's not dualism. It's like the opposite of dualism. It's, what do you call it?

[00:56:03] Ah, God. It's like there's only one thing, you know. Either you're hooked, you're, you're glued to your phone and you don't see the baby. Or your phone is just not important and it's far away and I haven't seen it in days and the only thing I see is my daughter. Like, life isn't like that for any of us. But I, at that time, I believed they were, they were right.

[00:56:32] So, I put down my phone and I just stared at my daughter. And, at a time where I might have benefited from, like, other parents saying that this is, you know, normal feelings and have you tried this? And, you know, I just sat there and I stared at her and my fear and my ambivalence inside just growed, you know.

[00:57:04] It just kept growing. And, so, if it's something that I really dislike, Sleepy, it's that thing, our common belief that things are just one way or the other way. Or some other way, but not every way. And, I still struggle with this and I think we all are.

[00:57:34] I mean, the unfathomable, unfathomable, do you say that? Unfathomable idea that an evil person can have good sides, you know. That a good person can be, can do evil things.

[00:58:05] And that one feeling can mean whatever, you know. And no one's emotional spectrum is the same. Everyone differs, everyone is weird, you know. Not in their own world, but compared to others. There is no normal.

[00:58:32] There is no common ground. There is no common sense. It's just us and, you know, what we do with it. And that really speaks to me. And it scares me how views of the more singular matter tend to get a lot of footholding today.

[00:59:03] I feel like the narratives of this is right and this is one thing and it is right is getting a lot of attention and room and space to move around today in the world. But why be afraid, you know. Why? What good is there to be afraid? What good does worrying do?

[00:59:34] If there is something we can do, then we do it, right? If we can't do anything about any particular thing, why worry? Why? The worry doesn't do anything. Well, it does something. It creates discomfort. And why?

[01:00:01] I mean, this sounds so easy, but of course it's so hard. And worry has like a function, of course. But only when we can do something about what we are worried about. Okay, I'm done for today. Next week I will be back. And again, thank you for being here, Sleepy.

[01:00:30] You are the best around. No one's gonna ever keep you down. You're the best. Try and be best because you're only a man and a man's gotta learn to keep it. What is that? That's the lead theme from that old Karate Kid song. Yeah. Write to me and tell me what you thought about this episode. Good night, Sleepy.