The Radio, Life and Love

I love radio. Some of my favorites are BBC 4 extra dramas, Freakonomics radio and certain local radio stations in Istanbul (where I live). Everything sounds better on radio. Same song sounds better on radio than on YouTube. One of the reasons for this may be that you don't get distracted watching the clip while listening on radio. So you can focus on the sounds. There is also the surprise effect. You're listening to a radio station. You're in bed, it's night, and you're lost in your thoughts and dreams. Feeling a little melancholic maybe. Suddenly, your favorite song starts playing. It's just wonderful. You can't pause it, you can't rewind and listen to that best part again. It's a one time thing. You have no control over it. So you just close your eyes and enjoy.

Same thing happens with computer games. When you are not able to pause or save your progress anytime you want, it is more exciting. There is possibility of losing, so you're more careful, you are more into it. Interestingly, we like the possibility of losing. Higher the stakes, higher the excitement. But when you are free to save/load your progress, all the fun just goes away.

And there is of course life itself... We can't stop it, we can't change things that happened. We can't go back in time and do differently. And this is scary. We can make a devastating mistake any moment. I think just being able to live is a great thing. And we should celebrate it.

I'm actually listening to radio right now, on my phone. Every song I listened tonight was about love. It's curious, isn't it? Love is something everybody talks about. But deserving love is a completely different thing. Not a lot of people do that. Maybe the only thing you should have done was to wait...