My best friend got married last Saturday. To one of my other best friends.
Congratulations Ellinor and Andreas and thank you for a wonderful day.
There are several stories of how me and Andreas met the first time. Some say that he used to beat me with a shovel on the head when we were kids, playing in the playground outside our house. I deny this.
Instead I remember my first year in school. Every break we all used to play soccer or hockey and on the field there was this guy they called Pesen.
I don’t think we ever talked to eachother back then, but I was aware of his presence.
Later in life, when it was time for confirmation I was surprised to find that it was his older brother who was called Pesen and not him. Instead everyone called him Acke. Strange, but that’s how it was.
Since then I call him Acke.
I was fourteen years old. I was probably already a bit different then back then. And Andreas could still not grow a beard.
Somewhere around there we started hanging out together, getting to know eachother and we have seen a lot of ups and downs since then. Parties, girlfriends and friends coming and going.
We had our days of guitar playing in my room. The mindless wanderings downtown, walking with determination without a goal. Kebab and Enchiladas. Raspberry “mumrikar” and watching “Alla ska bada”. We’ve had absurd amounts of vodka and red wine. Played hours of Texas Hold’em and Settlers of Catan.
Many times we have asked eachother how come two people like us, complete opposites, has remained close friends.
I don’t think that is possible to define.
I met Ellinor during my college days. Probably on one of those nights at the Student’s Pub.
We have mixed drinks together wearing those ugly orange shirts. Hour after hour of hard work and after twelve hours we have sat down in the early morning drinking Falcon Bayerskt, playing threeman armed with two dice and wearing a green wig. We didn’t really know eachother back then. But that has changed since then.
She got me my first real job. But I think I deserve it, because I got her a husband in return.
I don’t know if I’m allowed, but I take the blame for them meeting eachother for the first time and because of that causing the level of humour in Ellinors life to drop considerably and forcing Acke to share his home with a cat for so many years.
I invited Acke to Ellinors 25-years birthday party and had to take a lot of criticism for not telling him beforehand that it was a birthday party and not an ordinary party. Luckily he was the only one who thought it was embarrassing not to bring a gift and to be honest I don’t think he cares much either, but I like to repeat it just to have a story to tell.
I’m also to blame for making them meet the second time.
But I can unfortunately not take responsibility for that magic moment that evening that was to change their lives forever.
I have spent my entire life trying to understand how those moments occur, but I can only acknowledge that they do. You can’t predict them, not plan or force them to happen. We can only observe them as they happen. The one saying anything else is lying.
Still, those are the moments that changes everything.
We think we are in control.
We don’t.
Those tiny moments are in control.
And when they occur, we can either say Yes or No.
If we want to, we can find thousands of reasons to say no, or maybe. We can always find problems or obstacles. Reasons why it’s too hard or not a good idea.
But it is not about obstacles. It’s not about having all the pieces fit together before we can make it work. It is only about saying Yes to those moments.
Everything in life worth anything starts with one of those moments.
To say Yes to another person taking up space in our lives. To challenge us. Bring new influences and a new perspective. To allow someone else to see who we really are, our fear and our weakness.
Give them the oppurtunity to love us anyway.
Just the way we are.
This Saturday you said Yes to each other.
And despite that life doesn’t hand out guarantees, you will live through ups and downs, this Yes will carry you as far as you are willing to go.
No matter what happen, remember this. Remember this Yes.
And remember that I’m here for you.
Together, or oen at a time.
I have known since the day you became a couple that I would stand there as you Best Man, but still I can’t really express using words what an honour it is to share this day with you.
There is nothing more natural than to see you two together.
I wish you all the best, with all my heart.
This friday, I invited a bunch of people over för a cocktail party, and I was pleasantly surprised when fifteen people showed up, mixing cocktails until early morning. In any case, it turned out to be a success, even though I was not sure about that anymore the day after.
Earlier during the day I got a message by a friend, saying she wouldn’t show up. That was sad, of course, but what was different about it, was her honesty, that she didn’t have a “good” excuse not to come, except that she didn’t feel like it.
Isn’t it weird really that we must make up excuses so that we can do what we feel like.
Maybe it is a Swedish thing, that the social pressure is so strong that you have to go if someone invites you. So strong that people make up lies just to get out of it.
I think everyone has done it sometime in life. Told people we are sick, already promised to go somewhere else, broken a leg or just a vague, “I’m already busy”.
Or, even worse, how many times have we not gone to events where we don’t even want to be? Some obscure relatives party, someone we would rather not be in the same room as, the christmas party at work, dinner with the in-laws. And, taking the risk of never getting invited again, I have never understood christenings. Why people want them, or why people want to go to them. It’s not like the babies care, and I don’t need an excuse to eat cake.
If you like these events, sure, it can be nice, but why would you otherwise feel obligated to go?
Instead of just saying. “Hey, I’m not coming”. And leave it at that.
The fact is that sometimes we want to go, but not that day. Maybe we just don’t feel like it. Sometimes it might not be your thing. Sometimes all we want is to sit at home, watching tv in our underwear, not feeling guilty and then having to make up an excuse the next time we meet why we didn’t come.
Even though I wanted my friend to come to my party, her honesty felt great. Because when we are honest, when we are ok with disappointing others. We also give them the freedom to choose themselves. Then maybe they won’t even be disappointed.
Then, maybe, we can have a relationship without expectations and force.
And those kind of relationships, are always a lot better.
So, although it is hard to fully let go of life long conditioning, I think it’s worth the time and effort to notice the expectations and hidden demands we put upon others. Maybe give each other a little bit more space to choose for themselves how they want to spend their time today.
I have now photographed my photos at work for those of you who can’t come and look at them in place. It was kind of hard to make the photos look good because of the reflection but it gives you an idea at least. It looks way better in real life.
Sadly, I had to use a bunch of different frames since I didn’t want to spend a fortune on new frames, so it looks a bit disorganized, but all in all I’m very happy about how they look.
During ten months I shot 9978 photos. Out of all those I have saved 1751. Most of them are not very interesting or worth looking at for other people than myself, but out of them I have picked 45 photos that I especially like.
Today I put up a small exhibition with 23 of those photos at work. They will be hanging there for everyone to see them for at least a few weeks. To be honest it feels both great to see your own photos cover the walls of a room and strange to put my own stuff up for others to look at.
The feedback has been very positive so far, my manager told me to change my career (does she want me to leave?), but also a bit embarassing, recieving compliments from left and right.
Unfortunately not everyone can come by my office to watch the photos in big print, but if you come by my place after the exhibition at least some of them will cover my walls.
If that is not possible at all you can watch a slideshow of them on Flickr by clicking this link: Slideshow
You are more than welcome to buy prints of my photos. I will make sure they are printed and mailed in protective packaging in a standardized format to fit regular frames in whatever country you live in. I think I will be able to find an online print company that makes good quality stuff in each country needed so that I don’t have to ship them from Sweden.
Price and format in centimeter are:
40x50cm and 50x70cm – 600kr/US$80/€60
70x100cm – 900kr/US$120/€90
I’ll make sure that the prints are standardized to your country when printed.
So just let me know if you are interested or even if you are not, I would be happy if you want to share the link to this post on facebook, twitter or by e-mail to your friends. 
The 23 I put up at work you can see below, the rest shows up here tomorrow.
We are entering a new year.
2011
My thirtyfirst year of living.
This year is going to be very different from 2010. In all ways imaginable. But there is also something I want to bring with me into this new year, something I want to stay the same.
Once upon in a time I lived a stable and perfect life. Never afraid of anything.
This year I have done things I have never done before, my emotional life has been on a rollercoaster, up and down, up and down. I have been bored and exhilirated. I have been happy and scared to death. In love and completely desperate. Sometimes all at the same time.
Looking back at all this, nothing has really been too bad, nothing to be afraid of. But I didn’t know that then.
The real heroes in our world are the ones who despite their fear goes ahead and do it anyway.
It might look like people like Gandhi or Nelson Mandela were never afraid, that they had some inner strength that we lack.
I don’t believe that.
I believe they are just as afraid as we are. They were only better at ignoring that feeling, moving forward anyway.
They are no different from us. What they have done, we can do.
We must face our fears, stand up and tell it to it’s face that no matter how loud it screams, we are not going to listen.
We must go the whole way, live life fully, no matter what it means. We cannot all fight for independence or abolish apartheid, but we can give all we have right now, right here.
We can dare ourselves to fall in love even when it looks stupid, dare to be honest with the ones we meet, trust people we have never met. Dare to risk it all, dare to fail. Dare to stand there looking like fools when we do something weird. Sing when we bike down the street and see astonishment and smiles on peoples faces.
We must stand up against the impossible without closing our hearts and turn around.
Dare to be human
Maybe that means having more bad days than before, but maybe we will also have more great days. It is a risk. It is dangerous. It might be crazy, immature and stupid.
But to survive in a crazy world, we must be a little bit more crazy.
Stop waiting for some hero to come and save us. It will never happen, no one will do it for you.
2011 is the year when we have the chance to be the heroes in our own lives.
Take that chance.
Ten months has passed since I was last here in my apartment. Ten months of adventures, insights and experiences. Every week has been like a year in itself and sometimes I wondered if I would ever get back home again.
When you do nothing, time moves very slowly.
A part of me never wanted to return. A part of me was content to go back.
I am here now.
It might look like I return to the same place I left. The same job, the same friends, my family. Same apartment, the same country.
But I am not here “again”.
I am here now. In a new country, a new job. New friends and a completely new family. A whole new me.
Everything has changed since I was here the last time, yet everything is still the same.
In the end of June, me and Paula from Buenos Aires, was cramped into a bus, heading from Luang Prabang to Vientiane in Laos. A bus filled with people, a few chickens, sacks filled with stuff and even a two meter saw.
The driver was staying on the road with one hand, holding his cigarette with the other and all around me there was a constant chatter in a language I didn’t understand. Neither the people or the chicken
We sat in that bus for three hours. It was our reality right then. And right then I didn’t think at all about sitting in front of a computer, clicking away on things, solving problems or even putting in an effort at all.
After two days at the office, it is like I never left. Like I have always been here. It feels absurd. But in what other way could it be?
We are never anywhere else but here. Every moment is new.
Despite our tendency to forget just that.
I am now home. Or maybe not home. I am at my parents place, waiting to leave for Stockholm, pick up my keys and then come “home”.
I have a few things left to write, about my last days in Lucerne, my visit to Vienna, but after that, the trip itself is over. Kind of.
On Sunday, the day before leaving for Vienna, the Dodds family, James and me took the chairlift up to the top of the Pilatus mountain, the highest in the region. There was already snow up there for the kids to play in and the view is undescribable, my pictures are only bad copies of reality (as always).
Classical music has been a neglected type of music in my life, just like in most Swedes lives I would say. I still remember listening to Vivaldis four seasons and Edward Grieg, but that was more or less it.
By knowing Regi and Dan who are both violists I have had the privilege and oppurtunity to listen to more classical music than ever before. At the moment I can hear Dan practicing in his office.
The first real concert I went to was in Stockholm concert hall in 2008 when Dan came there to play with their orchestra Festival Strings Lucerne (Regi was at home with a newborn).
Later I saw him play in London the same year and this week I have seen three concerts. One with Dan in the Jesuitchurch, one with them both playing with clarinett player Sabine Meyer and this Saturday Regi played a tango concert together with her friend and collegue Anca Serban. Three very different types of concerts but the more I hear, the more I appreciate it.
It’s pretty impressive too that their daughter Yara, six years old, can sit still and listen to a two hour long concert. I don’t think many kids coudl do that.
In a few hours I will get on the plane from Zurich to Vienna in Austria and after a few days there I will return home to Stockholm.
This is the third time babysitting in my life, third time with the same kids. Maybe I get a bit spoiled, because these kids is really good to deal with!
Except for the time this summer when Yara got a dogs face and tooth right in her face (by mistake from the dog), with two hours crying and a pack of ice, things has been going quite well.
Yara started to cry tonight when her parents Regi and Dan left for rehearsal for their coming concert, so James took the oppurtunity to teach them rule number one in life. No money, no food. No toys. A reality you can’t escape, you just have to accept it. Maybe she stopped crying when she realized that she was lucky to have someone else work for her so she can play “pick stick” (mikado) and “go fish!”.
Later on while eating we got to teach the second principle in life, not to cry over spilled milk. If someone hits you, it hurts. But if you spill your milk, it’s not actually hurting, it’s all in your head. Nothing to cry or get upset about. That is how it often is, most of human suffering is in our heads and the real pain we feel we usually make worse by blaming someone else or screaming loudly about how unfair life is.
Luckily James and me will be long gone when the consequences of our crash course in Philosophy 101 thrown in the face of a three and five-year old pops up and unfortunately therapy is expensive in this coutnry, just like everything.
I have always been scared of kids. Always felt completely lost when they are around. Earlier in my life I was afraid of everything that you couldn’t calculate or control beforehand. And children is not very easy to control.
Coming here means to hang out with Yara and Liam, six and three years old (soon). At first they were a bit shy, but after a day or two, we are now best pals, just like last time I saw them in California in July.
If you are not used to it, you get tired pretty quickly. They don’t. It is probably easier somehow when you are in the middle of it, but I can’t help admiring parents to small kids.
I have learnt the hard way the first rule with dealing with kids. Prepare them for change. Do not just turn off the tv when you think they are finished, but explain earlier that they can only watch another episode. Most of the time you can avoid kicking and screaming.
This might be obvious for anyone with experience dealing with kids, but you got to start somewhere, right?
If you think about it, the difference between kids and adults are not that big. We don’t like change either most of the time.
We all know what we have. Even if we might be unhappy with it, we can usually deal with it anyway. But all change mean you take a risk. It might get better or worse, but we rather focus on the bad stuff. Therefore we avoid a multitude of possibilities only because there is a small chance that things might go horribly wrong. Success usually mean a willingness to fail completely, yet get up and try again.
That is why people in the west is more unhappy, suffer more from depression and anxiety than people in poor countries. The more you have the more you are risking when change comes.
Maybe the only difference between children and adults is that we are better at making up excuses and lie to ourselves about things. Instead of crying and screaming and then accepting we sometimes spend years and years avoiding the world as it is.
