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- #137. The present of regret.
#137. The present of regret.
Shem Opolot
September 05, 2025
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HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 When a new year begins, I’m not certain about many things, but I’m always certain that in that year, I’ll listen to at least a handful of songs I’ll like. And the process of finding new music is still special, even though streaming has removed a lot of the magic and collective discovery that made that process spiritual.
Like movies, most people used to discover new music at the same time. On the radio, on MTV Base, on Channel O. Now, you surrender to algorithms and The Friday Fix playlist.
Even during this song of the summer-less year, we’ve had some bangers. Clipse’s new album, for example, reminded me why I love hiphop so much, even though I can’t relate to most of the lyrics. And recently, Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” can’t get out of my head, even though it wasn’t written for me.
LIFE.
The present of regret.
Source: Getty Images
I’m writing this on the second leg of my trip back to America aboard Brussels Airlines—an airline I’m eager to graduate from as my pockets fatten.
I’m thinking about my family.
I’m thinking about the game my daughter plays where she greets me like it’s the first time she has met me and asks for my name.
I usually respond jokingly, saying my name is her name, and she responds by shouting “NOOOOOOO.” And then we repeat the game. Over and over. All throughout, she giggles a lot, and I catch myself staring at her, feeling a love I can’t put in words. A love some parents told me I’d only experience when I had children.
It’s rare for someone to tell you you’ll appreciate something abstract, and you experience the thing, and you in fact appreciate it. It’s about as rare as your uncle asking for your CV unprovoked and actually returning with a job offer. That kind of interpersonal alignment is reserved for tangible tragedies like the price of curtains, mattresses, and the mistrust of a tailor’s timing.
Most times, even if you experience the thing, you don’t recognize the moment. You don’t remember being told you’d feel the way you’re feeling.
In this way, I’m grateful for sadness. Because it forces you to be present a lot more than happiness does.
I’m thinking about the songs my son makes up or remixes from TikToks he watched when someone was too tired to watch him the old-fashioned way. No one admits they showed him TikToks, but the last word a child learns before crossing over into adulthood is “secret.” In fact, if you want to know your child has hit a major cognitive milestone, see if they can keep a secret.
Anyway.
I’m thinking about how he always sings when he’s climbing the stairs—an act he can’t do normally, as he folds himself over the banister and brushes against the walls like a cat. He also sings when he bolts out of the shower naked, having slipped through the nanny’s fingers before making the freshly mopped living room floor dirty. Again. He sings when he’s up to no good.
I’m thinking about how, for the things we love, there simply isn’t such a thing as enough.
My colleague lost her dad. He lived to be 100, and she told me his advanced age made her prepare for his death long before it happened. Whatever preparing means. But when he passed, she grieved like his death was sudden. Her brain told her not to be greedy, but her heart didn’t listen.
I tried to take every opportunity to spend time with my family while I was home. I stayed home most of the time. I took daily walks with the kids. We explored the neighborhood. We visited the nearby playground. I tried to say yes often.
But as I sit on this flight, I’m wondering why all I can think of is how much more I should’ve done. More walks. More hugs. More kisses. More yeses. More…just being there.
This experience—this “greed”—has rewired my understanding of presence and regret: neither can be fully solved, but both must be confronted. Regret is a downpayment for the next “present” you get.
But being present is hard and should be treated like a beautiful flower—to be observed, touched, and marveled at, without trying to pluck it and possess it. Taking sure-to-be-terrible pictures of fireworks is an example of trying to possess a moment you should be present in.
No matter how much you try to pluck the flower and “capture the moment,” you can’t capture the feeling. The fleeting feeling can only be felt when the moment comes back around. If it comes back around. And if you recognize it when it does.
It’s hard to describe your deepest love or your deepest pain because you were too busy feeling it. Too engrossed in the moment. Present—exactly where you were supposed to be.
THINGS.
A quote.
Following my anecdote last week, this quote from Ken Opalo about the danger of not gonna make it (NGMI) narratives taking root among Africans (and everyone, really) is on point. It also harkens back to my preaching about the power of stories.
I cannot emphasize this enough. We should care about narratives of catastrophe as applied to the Continent for the simple reason that the narratives we tell ourselves shape our perceptions of how the world works and therefore the feasible set of policy alternatives. Narratives beget stylized facts.
A picture.
Here’s the last picture I took with my favorite “I’m doing a doctorate” glasses before my son sat on them 🙃.
WORK.
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FUN.
The Friday Fix playlist
Shem’s picks
✅ Reddit’s list of the best books of the century so far
✅ The 50 greatest war movies
✅ 8 kinds of emergency kits you should have
✅ Where to vacation and when it’s best to go
✅ Every color imaginable in one place
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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