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- #83: The Paradox of Perspective
#83: The Paradox of Perspective
Shem Opolot
August 09, 2024
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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 🎉 A special greeting to those of you who, like me, are left-handed. Left-handedness was historically viewed as a precursor to mental illness, demonic, disrespectful, and, my personal favorite—not marriage material. How could something so wrong feel so...right?
Inspired by the Olympics, let’s see how many sports metaphors I can smuggle into today’s anecdote.
Also, there’s a song on this week’s playlist you probably wouldn’t want to accidentally play when your phone automatically connects to the Bluetooth speaker at a kid’s birthday party, but it’s a banger ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
LIFE.
🗝 The Paradox of Perspective.
Credit: fran_kie / Adobe Stock
Isn't it funny how the advice you reject in your youth becomes the wisdom you cling to as an adult?
Growing up middle class in Uganda is disorienting for many reasons, not least of which is that Uganda’s middle class doesn’t really exist. Attending brunch every now and then and visiting Dubai occasionally distracts you from realizing how close you are to poverty.
Being in this precarious position showed me extremes.
I studied with wealthy kids whose parents’ cars were allowed to park inside the school gate on visitation day, while my dad parked his car somewhere on the escarpments of the school hill and sent a carrier pigeon to my elder brother and I. But I also studied with kids who never got visitors and didn’t have televisions—let alone electricity—at home.
So…whether I smuggled ladies into the staircase outside our Bugolobi apartment, tried to wear my Sunday-best outfits to attend a simple end-of-year party, or nicked my brother’s good polos to impress people at fellowship, my mum’s message remained the same all my life:
“Don’t try to be something you’re not.”
That, plus my dad, who toed the line between authoritarianism and democracy like Simone Biles on the beam, would say,
“I know what is good for you; you don’t know what is good for you.”
This advice was a chorus when I was a kid, but I wasn’t ready to receive it.
Then I became an adult. Worse, a parent.
And I’m full of good advice now.
You see, one of the most painful paradoxes of aging is the inability to apply the wisdom you accumulate.
You finally learn how to treat people well, but you’ve burned too many bridges. You finally learn how to be a good lover, but you’re blocked.
You finally learn what it takes to be a good student, but you lack the fortitude (or the funds) for formal education.
You’re like a sprinter who finally hits top speed, only to be interrupted by the finish line.
So…since you can’t implement your wisdom, you try to pass it on. You become a mentor, you talk your children’s ears off, you start a newsletter…
But time is wasted on youth. Everything can wait until tomorrow. Everything.
And this mentality is by design.
Because youth must be full of fun and folly, the hardheadedness is baked into your DNA, scheduled to sprout in your teens and 20s, and it mustn’t be stifled.
After all, a kid shouldn’t be denied a swing just because an adult thinks they might fall.
So the next time you see a young person doing something stupid, caution them without judgment. Because,…when you go home and turn on your TV, and an old man with a hat is addressing the nation for the millionth time in 3-5 business days, remember that you, the stupid teenager, and the old man are all sprinters on the same track.
But you and the old man are running out of track.
THINGS.
A quote
Reputation is a simple construct, built on two ideas:
Ability: What you can do.
Reliability: What you actually do.
Now watching…
Can you tell my summer classes are done? Apple TV has quietly built a video library of bangers, and Presumed Innocent sits pretty in that stack.
Source: Apple TV
WORK.
Let me show you a magic trick.
Here’s the data:
Assume these are four separate tables, maybe even much further apart, and you must combine them and alphabetize the content by names.
You could copy and paste until you get carpal tunnel, or you could use two functions: VSTACK and SORT.
VSTACK allows you to combine data vertically.
Like so:
=VSTACK(range1, range2, range3)
Then, we can sort the resultant dataset, by wrapping the VSTACK formula in a SORT function.
SORT does exactly that—sorts.
Like so:
=SORT(range, column to sort by, ascending or descending…)
I redid the VSTACK formula to remove the header row, so it wouldn’t mess up the sort. But…notice the names are sorted.
This document will help you get started on mastering Excel.
FUN.
The Friday Fix Playlist
Shem’s picks
✅ An AI planner for your next trip.
✅ A playlist of songs Olympians use to get hyped up.
✅ Match the flags to the country.
✅ The most grim real-life stats you’ll ever see.
✅ Your passport could be replaced by your pulse in the future.
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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