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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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Hi! I'm Shem Opolot, and this is The Friday Fix, my weekly newsletter. If you've received it, you’re either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter (yes, I’m the kind of person who uses words like “latter”) camp and want to subscribe, then click on the shiny button below:
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HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 I was today years old when I learned why buttons are on different sides for men and women. The prevailing theory is that buttons and zippers ended up on different sides mainly because of old habits shaped by class and convenience: [most] men needed faster access with their dominant right hand, while wealthy women were dressed by right‑handed servants facing them, so women’s closures were flipped to the left. Mass manufacturing later froze those patterns in place. Another L for those of us who are left-handed.
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LIFE
How to hatewatch
My African friends hosted two successive World Cup hate-watch parties for Morocco and S. Africa in their respective opening matches of the tournament.
It was a shame, really. But sitting quietly at the back with a chicken drumstick in each hand and my cheeks and lips oily with evidence, I hoped my attendance wouldn’t be construed as an endorsement.
The argument about the spirit of the hate-watches infiltrated our dining conversation, where it was serviced inadequately, like someone eating chicken wings with a fork. A lot of these arguments that swim in the tense tide between realism and idealism often go nowhere because, as in a football match, everyone shows up with a predetermined and fixed allegiance. There can be no switching or sharing of jerseys during the game.
Should we engage the world as it is or as we want it to be?
If you’ve been here long enough, and can remember, my lazy answer is both. I envy fundamentalists because they take strong stands on issues at a great social cost I haven’t been able to pay. But I especially gravitate—albeit dangerously—toward relativists because of their love of nuance, a major casualty of content today. The footnotes—that space at the bottom of the page where authors used a smaller font to steal more time and white space, to share more context, to explain further, to justify, to rationalize—have vanished, in prose and in person.
Speaking of nuance, one of the newer historical figures I encountered for the first time this year is a former Dutch theologian and politician called Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper, who lived from 1837–1920, espoused ideas such as common grace, religious freedom, and sphere sovereignty.
Common grace can be described as the innate capacity for goodness all people have. It’s a capacity we’re imbued with because we were made in God’s [good] image. Common grace—not to be confused with the salvific grace via Jesus—is Kuyper’s answer to why non-believers can do good things. It is why non-believers can be exceptional artists, presidents, scientists, friends, and loved ones. It’s also why, apparently, as bad as things are in the world, they aren’t worse.
Connected to common grace, Kuyper celebrated the “manyness”—which you can call diversity—of God’s creation and emphasized the importance of the separation of church and state. Kuyper acknowledged God’s sovereignty over all creation, saying “there’s no single square inch of the earth Jesus does not claim to be His,” but also advocated for religious freedom because forcing everyone to be Christian hadn’t worked well. In this way, Kuyper balanced realism and idealism. He hoped for a world where everyone professed God [of the Bible] as sovereign, but also accepted that man’s sinful nature would always prevent that from happening. Therefore, he agitated for a pluralistic society accepting of multiple worldviews that would prevent us from collapsing into anarchy.
Related, sphere sovereignty empowers people and entities, such as governments, businesses, and civil society, to specialize, performing the roles they are uniquely qualified to perform. Kuyper, wary of government becoming “an octopus” with omnipresent tentacles, urged the state to empower the spheres to do their thing: families to raise their children, businesses to business, and churches to church. Government would serve as a referee, upholding justice and ensuring fair play.
As transformative as Kuyper’s ideas were, he also kind of sucked. He was a racist, infamously saying that Black people could only hope to be improved or saved by “commingling” with white people.
Entire belief systems stand on his shoulders, but Kuyper failed to live up to his own ideals.
Immoral people can make moral statements and even do moral things.
So, when thinking about the recurring arguments we have today, a conversation with two colleagues—which was sparked by one of the most scathing hit pieces I’ve ever read—comes to mind. One colleague asked if the person who wrote the piece was “speaking truth in love or loving to speak the truth.” There’s a difference.
She said there are many contentious issues in the world today, born out of conflicting worldviews and sin. Engaging in shouting matches from different camps—wearing different jerseys—isn’t effective. She said, “Whatever you speak against should be spoken from an umbrella you’re under.“ I interpreted this as, at the bare minimum, you may disagree with people, but when you speak against their actions, you ought to invite them under the bigger umbrella of shared humanity or basic human decency as you reproach them.
My other colleague chimed in here perfectly, saying, “There should be less calling people out, and more calling people in.”
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THINGS
A quote
It seems odd, wrong even, that “patience” and “passion” — the twin roots of love — should share a root in pāti, Latin for “to suffer.” But anyone who has lived, who has loved unskillfully or loved the unskilled, knows that the experience can be our sharpest instrument of suffering. We say we “fall” in love precisely because we know we can get bruised, know that the trap door it opens beneath our feet hurls us into depths we are entirely unprepared to fathom.
A picture
Looking forward to seeing them soon ♥️.
WORK
A fresh coat of paint
You have data:
You want to format the “Euro” cell in the same way (green fill, bold text, and the black outline). You could add each of those features manually, or you can use “Format painter” like so:
This is one of those evergreen, AI-proof features everyone should know how to use in Excel.
PRODUCTS
A course
A guide
FUN
The Friday Fix playlist
Your picks
> Ranking some of the best American college graduation speeches
> Tips for grilling
> Phrases to use to befriend people (or creep them out)
Have a great weekend,
— SO
