Storytelling, Activism & Humanity with Henrik Wilenius

Jennifer Norman:
Hello beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast, your source for hope, healing, happiness and humanity. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. This podcast is here to guide you on your journey of self love, empowerment, soul alignment and joy. With each episode, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they are doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad you're here, joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
In today's fast paced world, where it's easy to feel disconnected and overwhelmed by the noise, there's a craving for stories that touch our hearts and challenge our minds. We all seek narratives that resonate deeply, reminding us of our shared humanity and urging us to see the world through different lenses. Today, I have the honor of introducing someone to the show who is shifting the plotline of our cultural landscape. Henrik Wilenius is a prolific author whose work transcends mere fiction, serving up intriguing twists on the human experience. With the release of his latest young adult Rise Up trilogy, Henrik has carved a niche for himself as a philosopher, activist and storyteller extraordinaire. His journey from founding a contemporary art company to volunteering with the Helsinki Red Cross youth shelter speaks volumes about his commitment to understanding humanitys intricacies. Henriks why is simple yet profound to bridge divides and foster empathy through the power of narrative. Join us as we explore Henrik's insights into storytelling, activism, and the human condition.

Jennifer Norman:
Through his words, well uncover the beauty of finding common ground amidst diversity, the importance of representation in literature, and the courage it takes to confront societal injustices. By tuning in, youll gain a deeper understanding of how fiction can ignite change and inspire us to rise above adversity. So grab your headphones and prepare to embark on a journey of discovery with Henrik Wilenius. Welcome to the show, Henrik.

Henrik Wilenius:
Okay, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jennifer Norman:
It is such a pleasure. I'm so happy to be having this conversation with you. Now, you have had a diverse journey from founding a contemporary art company to volunteering with the Helsinki Red Cross youth shelter. You have to tell us how all of your earlier experiences have helped shape your perspective on life and storytelling.

Henrik Wilenius:
Well, maybe I should start from my early childhood. When I was a kid, I loved the stories of faraway lands and reading about the cultures and religions and different people. And there was one particular story that really grabbed me in my young age. And that was the story of Siddhartha Gautama, otherwise known as Buddha. I know that on the surface, I don't have much in common with him. I mean, he was an Indian prince, and I was born in the 20th century Northern Europe. But I think it's always that if you go deeper, then you find you discover more things that you have in common. And I think that's also this kind of changed the way I look at the world, because before that, I only noticed that I was different the others, because I was very kind of serious from the, my father said that I was born old and I had a hard time kind of connecting to my peers.

Henrik Wilenius:
I was, it was easy for me to connect to the older people. But then when I realized that it's not important how I'm different, but what really matters is that what I have in common, that kind of gave me this desire to go out to the world and explore and get to know other cultures and get to know other people. I might call it like some kind of a spiritual awakening. And my father saw it right away. He was a philosopher, by the way, and he had had a similar kind of experience, this kind of spiritual awakening, in his early teens. And so my parents allowed me to leave home, and then I enrolled in a boarding school in France. And from then on, I spent many years abroad. And I was just fascinated by different people and different cultures.

Henrik Wilenius:
And first two weeks when I was in France, I befriended a jewish boy in my school who had been on a plane that was hijacked to Entebbe, Uganda, and Israeli security forces had to free him or successfully free him. So that was a very kind of opening to different political situation and seeing the cultural conflicts that rage in the world. And just week later, I was staying with my mom's friend in Paris, and she had a Tunisian boyfriend, and he introduced me to North African Muslim Paris. And again, again, totally different cultures. And this kind of fed my curiosity. And from then, I went to other countries. I think that's the kind of a thing that prepared me to write. And then in my twenties, I returned to Finland, and I became an entrepreneur.

Henrik Wilenius:
I started this contemporary art dealership and servicing company. But after five, six years and big success, I noticed that it's not really what I want to do with rest of my life. And I also came to realize that I look at the world totally differently. Then I went back to school. I went to study philosophy, actually. And while I was there, I thought that it would be just an essay about rhetoric, Aristotelian rhetorics.

Henrik Wilenius:
But then I suddenly realized that, no, I'm writing a book about this because I disagree. And it was, again, what I have already realized in a young age that, like rhetorics is mostly about the, I mean, it's a great way to debate, but the instructions given in rhetorics are more like how to win. And it's not about understanding. And that kind of ignited me that this is not right. And then I realized that, that actually this is how the western kind of science is. I mean, when it's working well, it's people can kind of question themselves. But many times, because we are so insecure, we try to find kind of secure place by placing us about other people. And so my journey into writing was that I wanted to understand more what it is that stops us from learning and stops us from kind of evolving as a human beings. So then that was my first book was actually I brought it in Finnish.

Henrik Wilenius:
But soon I realized that very few people read philosophical texts. And I realized that it's through stories that I need to tell these things. And so I started to write stories. Then I realized I'm not writing for a Finnish audience because my experience, life experience is very international. So I switched to English, started writing first. Also I wrote scripts because I thought that that's so best way kind of to hone the story so that I like it to be dynamic. And in script writing there is also this thing that every word counts. So, you know, you have to use words that are active and that have multi dimension.

Henrik Wilenius:
When I started to write in this book, I knew that, okay, I'm gonna take a deep dive into Islam. It always been since I was 14, I've been interested in Islam, in my own personal journey. When I realized that western philosophy doesn't give me the questions or the answers that I want. I went into Sufism and that's like a mystical side of Islam. And then on to Zen Buddhist. But I've been going through a lot of these different wisdoms and mystical sides of religions and so. But yeah, so I didn't have agenda how I wanted to present Islam, but I just knew that I have had kind of a felt experience in Islam. So I kind of felt confident about writing this.

Henrik Wilenius:
Although I understand that there would be people that would question me what is my right because of the misrepresentation. And that's a genuine concern because I think many times in the western media, western literature, movies, Muslims are of misrepresented and there lacks kind of understanding what people are just looking things that divide us. Yes, because that's a better headline always. And then they lose the side of the deeper connection that all this Abrahamic religion, for example, what they have. But as I said, no agenda. And it just let the whole story grow on itself. I got very attached to the characters and they spoke to me. I felt their emotion they had. And here it is now. Rise Up trilogy.

Jennifer Norman:
Beautiful. Thank you so much for that explanation. And I appreciate so very much your old soul and the fact that your father was a philosopher and you had that in you from an early age, and you had this curiosity from an early age about humankind and what does connect us and what does separate us. And you were able to tell early on the difference between rhetoric and a conversation where debate is, I'm going to have an argument, you have an argument, and one of us is going to win, and one of us is going to lose. And that's very much how conversation happens these days in politics, on social media, every, a lot of what we see, unfortunately, and it's I'm right, you're wrong. And then people get polarized. We end up, you know, taking sides rather than being able to see, oh, I get your point. And you are exposed to these wonderful experiences early on that opened up your heart and your mind to complete different ways of living and some of the atrocities that can happen when we are divided, when we separate ourselves from each other.

Jennifer Norman:
And I am so appreciative of the fact that you were able to take all of that. And really, I would say, fairly quickly convert that into a way that's digestible and it's entertaining. And it's a way to help younger people, because we know that younger people, once they are able to learn lessons and they carry them with them for a long time, these are things that they start thinking themselves, and it becomes. It starts to normalize. I'm feeling this way or that person's different from me. This is what they're going through. This is the drama that's going on in their lives. I can see that we have a connection because my drama might be somewhat different, but underneath it all, the emotions are similar.

Jennifer Norman:
So I would love for you to tell everybody who's listening once you got through. Your first book was called The End of Restlessness, which was your philosophical exploration when you of your own coming of age. And then you switched over to your most recent work, which is The Rise Up trilogy, and you tackle themes like diversity, friendship, human decency. What is your hope that people will get once they do read these books?

Henrik Wilenius:
I hope that through the characters I created, or I don't know if I even created, if they are just coming to me. I was putting a lot of attention that my characters would be people that my readers could relate to, because this is kind of the way to open one's heart and kind of get to experience what they experienced in the heart level, because that is then the only way that actually we can change ourselves, because it doesn't happen in a rational mind. It happens in our heart. There. I have to say that after I finished the first part, the Catch You If You Fall, and I went to the second one, then I wanted to kind of make it a little bit more difficult for me, because then this climate change and animal cruelty, animal rights are very close to my heart, as I am also a vegan activist. But there are very few stories out there that there are some dystopian books that actually deal with the current issues. And that was the thing that I wanted to do that bring these very current issues into the books so that would kind of open to people and through the characters that leap through them.

Jennifer Norman:
Now, in the your books, they follow the journey of Hashim, Alex, and Maryam as they navigate through these complex social and political landscapes. How did the dynamics of their friendship evolve over the series? And what challenges did you face in portraying their growth authentically?

Henrik Wilenius:
Well, of course, all the characters have part of me in them, but it's also through my life experience. I have to say that, for example, Hashim's and Alex's relationship, this kind of teasing relationship, and very kind of blight deep at the same time, is that I had this kind of relationship when I was young. And also Maryam has a lot of things and little or bigger things that I have gone through. But in the end, it all came kind of naturally, I think, for the writer, and that's a very important kind of part, how writer can catch these different fictional characters is that they first have to go through their own tribulations. And because in order to write honestly about your own experience, you have to be very sensitive to what's happening in your body or heart or mind, and you have to be able to catch it without self censorship. So once you have gone, usually for writers, fiction writers, the first books are always kind of a autobiographical. And then you just follow that. You follow their voice, you follow their story, and you try not to condemn them in any way.

Henrik Wilenius:
Although, of course, there were a few things that I decided, because I have their two muslim characters and then Alex, that I would love to the story go like, especially for Maryam and Hashim, in the context of their own tradition, so that what happens to them and where they find solace and where they find advice is their own tradition. In other words, Islam. And that was also very, very interesting journey for me because I understood, as I was frightened, this, that actually Islam can be very modern and can be very helpful how to deal with the current issues. Whereas usually in the west, we have this picture or this image that Islam is kind of a middle aged thing, but it is actually. It's very modern if you read Quran or if you indict it into the Islamic dogma.

Jennifer Norman:
Well, one of the struggles that Hashim faces is that, and Hashim is the protagonist in Catch You If You Fall, he is queer. And the story addresses some of the harmful stereotypes and the journey that he had towards self discovery and how he was concealing his queerness because he had such conflict within himself with his faith. And so from that aspect of it, he was almost self flagellating. At the beginning of the book, I wanted to read a passage which I found very compelling, and perhaps you can share your thoughts with us after.

Jennifer Norman:
It goes: "As he plodded across the courtyard, he felt God staring down at him. He was sure that God saw his lust and he felt shame. If only Allah would bring on the rain, strike him down with lightning, and then raise him from the dead as a cleansed heterosexual man." Wow. I would love to hear how you put that together. And it really does show the struggle that he had internally and how he was really so conflicted about how he felt inside versus his nature and his religion.

Henrik Wilenius:
Yes, I think there's several factors here. One is, of course, the shame that I think even if you live in a modern world or if you think that your parents would right away accept you there, it's actually longer journey for yourself to accept something. So I think, to a certain extent, Hashim already kind of has accepted that he is gay, but he's, but especially since he had just, or he's going to visit a mosque. And kind of the attitude in the mosque is very, very anti gay. So he's kind of trying to find some kind of strength to carry on and go to the mosque.

Henrik Wilenius:
And another aspect I think here is important is that in Islam, the believer has a direct access or contact with God. Unlike in Christianity, it usually, that's why we have ministers and all these things. So it's quite natural to you to have this direct discussion kind of with God. And, of course, it's kind of also my sense of humor here, little bit that comes that strike me dead and let me rise again as a clean human being. But I think, you know, actually, that's what I share with Hashim, this sense of humor. So he's not 100% serious here, but he's kind of, because he has also gone through this experience just 1 minute, two minutes before. Very awkward. And when he met his crush at how he acted in the situation.

Jennifer Norman:
That's one thing I love about young adult novels. There's always the crush and the feeling of embarrassment. And just like the red flaming cheeks, when you see somebody that you have this crush on and everybody can relate to, it's like, oh, my God, you just tighten up and you say the wrong thing, you do the wrong thing. You just feel like an idiot afterwards. It's very common, it's very universal. It applies around the world very well.

Jennifer Norman:
But on the other hand, you also write about all these complex issues. You write about politics, you write about climate change. And I'm curious about the message in trying to make it very relatable and also make it so that it's something that we pay much more attention to. I know that you said that you're also an animal advocate, you're a vegan. And so a lot of these causes are very important to you to be able to convey and to use your books as a platform for a message. How is it that, I guess, the process of interweaving these elements into your storyline, what do you think that is in terms of coming up with the idea, the concept for the book, and then saying, I want to navigate this in, but I don't want it to come across as preachy, or else it'll be a turn off for these books.

Henrik Wilenius:
I think I read like 30 different books from everything from climate change to animal rights, Islam, to whatever cultures. And I always made notes and I just wrote them in. And then when I was writing, idea came up, and then it somehow connected to something that I have read. And it was kind of how the things kind of evolved. They just came out of thin air in certain ways. But of course, there was like, let's say Merry Farm, which is about animal cruelty. There was this story that I was watching, this German activist group, and they broke into a henhouse or chicken farm. And then I started thinking that what would happen if these hens had bird flu? And that was kind of my cue.

Henrik Wilenius:
Okay, here is the story that I need to evolve. And with the climate change it was. One of my favorite writers is Jonathan Safran Foer. He has written many good books in fiction, but also about veganism. And in one of his books he writes that climate change is a kind of a very difficult question that the science has thrown to the fiction writers. And how do you write about something that is so abstract that we hardly can see within our eyes and make an interesting story out of climate change? That's why there's very few fiction books about climate change, or there is, but it's like what happened after, like the big explosion or the end of the world, this stop being there. And that was kind of a challenge that I took.

Henrik Wilenius:
And then I started create this story, you know, like, what is, how do we see climate change happening? And of course, the weather and hurricanes. And then I started to read about Hurricane Sandy. There are a lot of books about that. You know, it's just things piled up and I was just following the lead.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. The book that you are talking about, Merry Farm, delves into government cover ups, its consequences, as well as these other deeper societal issues. I found it interesting to kind of balance that out in a young adult novel and then that suspense, you've got this intrigue and then how it impacts the youth's lives.

Henrik Wilenius:
Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Your sense of researching, you read books, you go and you do a lot of internet research, and then you kind of bounce back into your own philosophies and in your own beliefs in order to create these characters and to create the plots.

Henrik Wilenius:
But it is also a lot, I have a lot of like Muslim friends or friends, and I talk a lot. I, I mean, I, well, I'm a part time hermit, but. But also I enjoy very much...

Jennifer Norman:
A lot of writers can probably agree with that.

Henrik Wilenius:
Yeah. But also I have to say that one of the, what inspired me to write young adults was, as you mentioned in the beginning, was that I was 15 years, I worked as a volunteer in Red Cross youth shelter. And it's just kind of, it blew my mind how smart and wise they are. I think it happens. You know, something happens to us humans when we age. We start to be rational or try to be rational. We have all these expectations, and somehow the wisdom, inert wisdom that we have dilutes. And I think that same thing happens to creativity also.

Henrik Wilenius:
We stop being able to make up stories and see things in multi dimensions. So, yeah, I understood that. I don't have to downplay the wisdom that the youth actually have, and I just use it, their wisdom trying to create this story.

Jennifer Norman:
Well, ladies and gentlemen, the books are The Rise Up trilogy, and Henrik is very active on TikTok. You have to go follow him on TikTok and do check out the Rise Up Trilogy Podcast. He does have all of the chapters on audiobooks so that you can go and take a listen and you can also go over to Amazon and download and then be sure to leave up to a five star review for Henrik. Thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast, Henrik, it was delightful to speak to you.

Henrik Wilenius:
Yes, it was very much. And thank you for taking the time to read my writing and it's been great honor to have this conversation with you.

Jennifer Norman:
Delighted. Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, follow rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.