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#144. Connectedness
Shem Opolot
October 24, 2025
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Who am I? I’m Shem Opolot, a health professional turned content creator, passionate about helping people be their best selves in life and work.
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HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 Deloitte was caught using generative AI to complete a report for the Australian government, so surely you can muster some more audacity: apply for that job. Ask that pretty person out on a date. Ask for that raise.
LIFE.
Connectedness
I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist when I say this, but everything is connected.
While walking with a friend one evening, I smelled the most beautiful scent from honeysuckles trapped inside a white picket fence. Unlike the phantom smell some people pretend gifted roses have, this was a smell I recognized and loved, so I slowed down to savor it.
My friend, incredulous, asked me why I slowed down, and I, somewhat dramatically, acted beside myself:
“Can’t you smell that?!”
They couldn’t.
Several steps ahead at that point, I grabbed them by their jacket and backtracked to the fence. But the smell was gone.
To avoid the accusations of hallucinations, I explained how we smell things:
If the person seated next to you on the train pooped, your sense of smell would alert you first.
You can smell it because tiny particles from the poop ride the waft of air and enter your nose. In your nose, the particles sit on receptacles, which you can visualize as tiny funnels you’d use to pour paraffin into tiny jerrycans. Attached to the funnels are sensory nerves, which are the body’s rumormongers. This network of tattletales tells the brain something’s up. Once the brain interprets the message, it communicates its findings through another messenger—a motor nerve—resulting in the repugnant smell you register that causes you to squeeze your face.
One part of your brain tells you there’s shit nearby; another part decides how to handle it. Let me say that again: one part of your brain tells you there’s shit nearby; another part decides how to handle it.
If you decide to ignore the smell, eventually, you’ll stop smelling the shit, at least intermittently. This happens because, every now and then, all the funnels in your nose get full, and no more signals are sent to your brain. Your brain likes patterns, so it minimizes the number of times it nudges you about the same thing to conserve energy. That’s why a frat house or a teenage boy’s room smells like that, with the inhabitants seemingly unfazed.
So…why are we still talking about smells?
The idea that the source of a smell must be literally inside you shows how connected you are—and must be—to your environment. You’re connected to that poorly disposed-of trash. You’re connected to that pothole. You’re connected to that annoying neighbor.
Accepting and understanding that connectedness can make your life much easier.
Accepting that annoying people and potholes are part of your life won’t eliminate the problems, but it can make your burdens more bearable.
Our ancestors evolved to process scenarios as either ones to approach or ones to avoid. But their brains got bigger, and they learned to think. Thinking likely extended their life spans by 20 years, before they discovered love, which probably halved those gains.
In this massively interconnected existence, thinking allows you to unlock more options beyond fighting or fleeing. One part of your brain tells you there’s shit nearby; another part decides how to handle it.
THINGS.
A quote.
This extract from a tweet was part of a response (which you should read) to someone talking about disengaging from politics.
And when the council of the living gathers, the silent are always represented, but rarely in ways that favour them.
A picture.
This picture reminds me of code switching. We all do it. We circle back at work but double-text in real life. I often tell people in Uganda that one of the things I appreciate most about being home, or just surrounded by Ugandans while in America, is the opportunity to give my many adopted and adapted accents a rest. To just speak how I speak naturally.
A good afternoon of speaking naturally.
WORK.
How to be an effective early-stage employee
I stumbled upon Daniel Debow’s guide to being an effective employer, and while it’s a capitalist’s wet dream with bonus points for scaling it without increasing pay, the workplace—nay, the world—would be better if everyone adopted the mindset he espouses.
Here’s Debow’s “Helpful Hierarchy” in summary:
FUN.
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Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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