yesterday evening was ace. where i’m staying someone new came for a week. i was told he was #finnish, and was asked by the host if i could hang around to receive.
it was downtime for me yesterday: i was needing some respite from all the thoughts i’d been having.
the new guy is young, brainy, sharp, kindly — and not #finnish at all, but #spanish. i spent the whole long evening speaking in #castellano with him, and it was fab: i realise how much i know about #spanish culture, and the bad memories just refused to surface on being with a good person from the country which i see now i’d also created so many good memories out from whilst there.
i also saw my #teaching and #enabling #skillsets kicking in. it was really interesting, communicating with him about our differing and similar perceptions of the worlds that overlapped around us — and then again, the worlds we each enjoyed which didn’t overlap. (as a by-the-by, and after the vibes of last night, i’d now like to explore mentoring quite seriously, if anyone who might facilitate this is reading these lines. i listen well face-to-face in a way maybe my writing gives lie to. and i make and communicate #polymath-style connections quite robustly and vigorously. both could serve newly arrived others to #sweden really well.)
he had actually been to #finland quite recently. and i have been in both #sweden and the #uk on and off since last december; that is, just before christmas.
‘much to praise in #scandinavia. very much both of us liked already.
we covered a lot of ground: he’s here on a post-#spanish master internship at #karolinska. and i told him of the 10,000 startups in #stockholm. and i explained how ignorant of another world i’d been all these years. and i said how moving from one country to another might not only be a question of building on existing abilities but also recognising the job and work roles would have not only differing descriptors but maybe even different goals and desired outcomes: even different philosophies.
we also spoke of the importance of philosophy more widely in everything — here, especially #tech (he studies and works in the field of #biology): worlds we all these days find ourselves inhabiting.
and finally he helped me satisfactorily resolve a conundrum which had led a friend of my father’s back in the 1960s to commit suicide. if i remember rightly, the friend had been a biochemist: and was involved in the study of cellular will — that is, whether at cellular level the idea and fact of free will can be detected.
it pushed my father’s friend over the edge; the philosophical challenge being that maybe whatever you chose to do would be impulsed inevitably by something external to yourself. no free will, then … anywhere, ever, at all.
young ismael, the spanish intern and researcher’s name, reminds me of fernando torres just a little bit. and he defo scored a goal or two when he explained to me the fact that a healthy cell to remain healthy can neither be #dependent nor #independent. it suddenly laid it out clearer than clear for me the reality that in a completely different time had served to kill my father’s friend: cells do indeed have free will; and they exert it to survive … even if nothing else. and what they must choose in order to survive in this way is what gordon brown said once about #interdependence: it’s the only thing worth pursuing, tbh. neither needy nor downright may you in all intellectual sincerity be. simply conscious of the collective you form a part of which always, always must be posited around the actions of individuals.
and so if cells, why not us?
and if us in order to survive, why not in order to thrive too?
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