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#42: What are you afraid of?
Shem Opolot
October 20, 2023
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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 🎉 One of my new friends in my doctorate program casually flew to England last week to accept an Order of the British Empire award from Princess Anne. He got the award for practically rebuilding his country’s health system from the ground-up. Twice. I told him I have a newsletter with close to 700 weekly readers, so, you know, basically the same thing.
You gotta listen to this week’s playlist. So many gems 🔥.
Estimated read time: 5 minutes
💡 1 thing I’ve learned
What are you afraid of?
People don’t fear change; people fear loss.
When was the last time you changed your mind about a strongly-held belief?
The year was 2010. Usher’s “Daddy’s home” was playing on the car radio, but this daddy was leaving home to get on his first ever flight. To go to college in America no less. With the pointy part of my head resting on the left backseat window of my brother’s Suzuki, my emotions stirred in my gut, and travelled to my eyes but I stifled them. My life was about to change forever and I was terrified.
But I wasn’t afraid of the change, I was afraid of leaving my family behind. I was afraid of the uncertainty ahead of me.
Everything on the plane was fascinating: The voice of a faceless pilot interrupting my movie, the uniformed hostesses pacing back and forth with smiles drawn on their faces with permanent markers, the trollies of food and drinks clinking through the aisles, the fact that you could pee in a box thousands of miles in the air and flush? Did the plane just eject the excrement over the Savannah grasslands? I had so many questions.
I landed in London Heathrow and got lost, so I found the first uniformed airport staff member I could see, who gave me convoluted directions to my gate. But I just picked the directions to the next uniformed staff, and kept doing that until I reached my gate.
By this time, I (also) had a British accent, innit?
I landed in Tampa, Florida and the humidity was a hot slap in the face. Those Floridians are boiling down there, I tell you. It’s no wonder Florida Man is always moving mad. I must have experienced the beginnings of a heat stroke, because I forgot my passport on the airport counter.
A story for another day.
***
A few weeks into the semester, I could finally order pizza on the phone in an American accent and I’d made some friends. One of my friends was James—a handsome black man, my height, with a nice face, and a great sense of style only matched by his great sense of humor. We met in Biology class and we became friends because (1) we were the only black people in the class and (2) I had the answers and James had all the questions (James is a sommelier now; Biology was not in the cards for him).
Fast forward a year and some change, because of James and a bunch of other factors I might share some day, I joined a fraternity. An experience that was more Van Wilder than Stomp the Yard, but a fun experience nonetheless.
One day, after a pre-initiation fraternity education event, we gathered in our chapter room to sacrifice goats and drink each other’s blood debrief. During the debrief, we sat in a kumbaya circle and talked about our feelings. Amid profound oversharing all around, James spoke about the layered battle he faced every day as a black gay Christian man in the South.
Yep, James was gay and that’s how I found out.
Still mentally fresh from Uganda, I was as homophobic as our government is incompetent, so I left the chapter room that night in a crisis of conscience. I’d never met an openly gay person before, and James didn’t fit the preconceived notions I had.
Was I going to unfriend James? Were all the months of us being friends insignificant because I’d learned this one thing about him?
We don’t fear change; we fear loss.
In my case, I wrestled with losing my morals. I wrestled with what I perceived as disloyalty to my long-held values.
James and I remain great friends to this day.
The next time you find yourself resisting change, ask yourself, “What am I afraid of losing?”
🔌 Shameless plug
Some day I’ll stop writing quips here to lure you in. But today is not that day. Join the best news family in Africa today!
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🎁 My favorite things
A quote
The eye doesn’t see. The brain sees. The eye just transmits. So what we see isn’t only determined by what comes through the eyes. What we see is affected by our memories, our feelings, and by what we’ve seen before.
A picture
Here’s a picture of the door to my new home! Cute, right? I’m still in that phase where every kavera (trash bag, for my non-Ugandans) becomes a rubbish kavera for a while, but I’m making progress.
🚀 Pro tip
Shifting columns like a pro in 1,2,3…
I bet you missed Excel 😉.
Look at the data below:
What if you want to move the “Department” column to the left of the “Start Date” column? What would you do?
You can create a space to the left of the “Start date” column, select the whole “Department” column, cut it…aaaaannd I’ve fallen asleep.
Instead…
1. Select the column you want to move by clicking the column letter at the top.
2. While the column is selected, hold down Shift and drag the selected column where you’d like it to go using your trackpad. (Use the black line as your guide)
Done. You’ve just freed up more time you can use to continue avoiding work.
🧩 Where fun goes to flourish
The Friday Fix playlist
Brain teaser
From Braingle.
If you hate small small maths, skip this one: In the fictional, rat-infested village of Cattatackya (where cats live) last month, each cat killed the same number of rats as every other cat. The total number of rat fatalities (deaths) during the month came to a total of 2117.
Less than 50 cats achieved this remarkable number of rat killings. How many cats were living in Cattatackya that month, and how many rats did each kill?
Answer below
Shem’s picks
🤖 Experts predict the future of technology
📈 When I say you can do ANYTHING in Excel, I mean it
🌮 The best street food in the world
Brain teaser answer
Answer: 29 cats each killed 73 rats.
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
🤝🏾 How I can help you
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