Free radicals (or simply radicals) are part of a very unstable, and therefore very reactive, chemical species, and from this first line you can already tell that they are very complicated types, because tell me how you can define yourself as free and radical if you end up belonging to a species.
Be that as it may, they are defined as ‘molecular entities consisting of an atom or molecule in which there is at least one unpaired electron’, and it is precisely this last characteristic that makes them so particular and, unfortunately for them, makes their average life rather short.
But it’s not that they disappear or die, it’s that they transform.
In fact, their reactivity often leads them to bind to other radicals, for example by pairing their respective unpaired electrons (me really, I don’t know..) until they form a covalent bond, or to remove an electron from other molecules, thus giving life to anions.
But their properties don’t stop there, because they are even able to extract an atom from a nearby molecule, forming another radical and thus triggering chain reactions.
Anyone who knows chemistry (not me, but thanks Wikipedia..) knows that ions also have similar characteristics, except that radicals are much more reactive, so they combine more easily.
But there’s more, because to avoid missing anything (or perhaps to spite us!) special entities can also form, consisting of their bond, radical ions.
In short, they tie themselves up, they untie themselves, and then they bind themselves up, they disappear and reappear, and thinking about them like this it seems like we see them twirling in an infinite waltz, all busy exchanging company, remaining alone that little bit’ that goes to them and then hugging each other again, maybe with someone else.
After all, it happened like this even in school, or rather in school!
“Do you want to be with me..? (YES – NO – MAYBE)”
But how do these blessed radicals then come about?
Soon said..
In fact, they are formed spontaneously, both in nature and in the laboratory, by the action of light or heat and due to the splitting of a covalent bond, so and to make a long story short, the moral of the story is this:
To produce something new you need energy, and often this energy comes from.. a separation!
It could be the case of the fission of the atom (but brrr, how scary to talk about it today..) or that of the newborn, who when he comes to light creates his first image (i.e. his first thought!) precisely because it separates from the mother’s belly, or..
Okay’ It’s not like separating is ever all flowers and roses, but at least you don’t waste energy to stay together by force, something like I pull over here that you pull over, because that is, it’s okay to commit that is easy in chemistry and relationships there is practically nothing at all, but at the same time it’s not like separating means necessarily breaking up.
On the contrary!
Sometimes you can separate yourself from who we were and the way you were perhaps together, letting go of something of us that no longer belonged to us (but at the same time seemed to define us for who we were) with the result that one felt a very strong risk of getting lost.
Of getting lost inside.
And indeed there is that risk, which is why one of the most difficult sentences to understand for someone like me who is a bit’ bossy, is the one I’ve heard said many times, and that is that the best separations are those that fail.. until they succeed!
I don’t know about you, but just rereading it now so I don’t feel stupid again makes me want to start studying a chemistry textbook.
In short, if in medicine it is now established how free radicals can be very, very harmful, returning to our metaphor and trying to throw it into politics, what is it that would make them so dangerous?
The fact of being radical or being free?
I don’t know, and perhaps in a very unradical way I would say both, because if it comes to choosing between wings and roots you risk sitting on the branch of the tree.
Sheltered, yes, but also hidden.
Marco Randisi
A few days ago, Emma Bonino died, and rereading her life of courage and battles (like the one about divorce, to name just one…), I felt a sadness that I couldn’t define in any other way than profound, as if, in addition to the best President of the Republic we’ve never had, a friend you’ve never met had passed away..
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