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#146. Making meaning
Shem Opolot
November 07, 2025
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HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 I’ve had a lot more time than usual to sit with my thoughts this week. I’ve been thinking about the so-called scarcity of decision. The idea of “waiting until you’re ready” is such a thief of time. Readiness comes from experience, from actions, not feelings. More on this later.
You look so good today; I hope your enemies see you.
LIFE.
Making meaning.
A few weeks ago, I sat near the most interesting man in the world at a networking dinner.
We arrived early, so the room was still sparsely populated with waiters fussing around the furniture. The chairs whined as they were moved about, and the scruff from the ruffled tablecloths hadn’t yet found resting places.
The man was short, bespectacled, and unassuming, with the kindest face. Have you ever met someone for the first time and just knew they were a good person? That’s how great his smile was.
His name was Diego.
He had a thick Latino accent, and we instantly bonded over our indecision while scanning the Japanese food menu. We shared many laughs before we finally asked each other about work. Very backward DC behavior. Clearly, we also bonded over being D.C. rookies.
After my spiel, the room was now bustling, and the crescendo of murmurs before we were called to attention by the clinking of a glass made it hard for me to hear him. And I really wanted to hear him.
So I leaned in close enough to smell the prawn tempura he settled for on his breath: Diego worked in a lab in China for several years, where he tried to grow bacteria in lunar soil. If bacteria can grow on the moon, then it may be possible for more advanced life to exist there.
Diego’s successful work in the lab led him to ask “deep questions” (as he put it) about life, culminating in his current doctoral study in D.C. He’s studying auto-catalytic systems: systems that constitute the raw materials for life and, in the right conditions, can somehow give rise to new life.
My excitement superseded my home training, so I interjected to tell him he was essentially seeking the source of life and maybe even…the meaning of life.
***
I credit my time in Ohio with helping me learn that I didn’t want to pursue medicine long-term. Many things converged to convince me that I was searching for meaning and that I could do more meaningful work—more “good”—by focusing on systems and policies rather than healing individuals. But when I look back, faced with a difficult decision, I grasped for rationales to support my decision. To match meaning with my mission.
***
When I got into Duke, I had to find a way to get to Durham, North Carolina, from Lakeland, Florida. Since I didn’t have a car, one of my friends told me I could take a train that would get me close enough to Durham to get an affordable Uber ride to my final destination.
Speaking of my final destination, I didn’t have a place to stay in Durham yet.
I’d been scouring Facebook groups and messaging contacts the school recommended for weeks, to no avail. But on the train, two potential landlords responded to my cold overtures. One was a single, 60-something Black Christian man who could out-bench me in the gym. He wanted to fill his pockets and, though he wouldn’t admit it, his heart, by leasing a room in his house.
I interpreted all our similarities as signs and agreed to sign the lease when I reached the house later that day. I’d live in that house until nearly the end of my master’s study, when the kind, buff old man kicked me out for leaving the space heater on one too many times. Err, I haven’t always been this organized.
But we parted on good terms.
Last month, on my daily evening walk, I randomly thought of the buff old man in Durham who showed me kindness many years ago. And for a second, I wondered why he had come to mind. What was the meaning of this random thought?
Nothing came to mind.
I grabbed my phone and searched for his number like a raccoon in an alley trash can. I found the number buried in an old email exchange between us. Thank God he was “I use a Hotmail account as my main email” years old.
Old people rarely change their phone numbers, so I called the number, but there was no answer. I left a voicemail as a Hail Mary, like a message sent into space for a chance connection with extraterrestrial life. A few days later, he called back, his excitement climbing out of the phone, and guess what?
We met for dinner this evening.
I joked about him kicking me out of his house, and he laughed until there were tears in his eyes. I paid for dinner and told him it covered the inflated electricity bills I caused.
He returns to Durham tomorrow.
We often search for meaning, for signs to point us in the right direction. But like Diego and his bacteria, and me cold-calling the buff old man, meaning is meant to be made, not found. Just like readiness, it is an action, not a feeling.
THINGS.
A quote.
I extracted this quote from a larger tweet I think Christians ought to reflect on.
And if what you’re selling is a faith model that only works for a tiny handful of people, while the rest must watch and hope from the sidelines, then it’s not a theology of hope, it’s a Ponzi scheme doctrine. A few win to keep the illusion alive, while the rest feed the myth.
A truly useful faith should inspire structures that uplift the many, not fantasies that comfort the few.
A picture.
I visited the Glenstone Museum in Maryland a few weeks ago, and it’s such a beautiful place. I really love beauty for the sake of beauty.
Split-Rocker by Jeff Koons | 📍Glenstone Museum
FUN.
The Friday Fix playlist
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> This site shows you how to stick things together
> The most expensive things ever stolen
> Guess when and where these pictures were taken
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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