I didn’t hear about it until after I sent my newsletter, but even if I had, there’s no way I’d have known what I wanted to say about it anyway.

Who’s Tim Keller, you might wonder? He was a highly respected Christian leader who was somehow also completely unknown in even some Christian circles. (You can check out the Wikipedia entry on him.) But he was especially respected for his unusual combination of conviction and compassion: he was conservative in his beliefs but also very generous with people, Christian and otherwise, who had different views—even when they didn’t respond mutually. I greatly admire that: being clear about what you think but also generous with those who disagree. CS Lewis, of whom Keller was also a huge fan, embodied it well.

An obit in The Atlantic put it this way:

Keller’s approach—to spurn tribalism, avoid picking unnecessary fights, and preach to our shared existential angst—was not normal, not even in New York City.

As you can imagine, that only earned him criticism from both sides, because there are few things more upsetting to people who insist on seeing things as binary than a refusal to be so reduced.

But that’s not what struck me most in the days since Keller’s passing. Although it kind of is—because that approach was rooted in the very thing I found most striking about what got emphasised, and what didn’t, in how people have talked about him.

His character, not his gifts.

Let’s dig into that in a bit, but first…

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Gifts or fruit

One of the most impactful ideas from the Bible for me was the idea of prioritising fruit over gifts. Fruit, in biblical terms, is about character, things like love and patience and kindness and gentleness. And the idea is also that fruit takes time: you don’t get fruit in one day. It’s something you have to work at. And it’s not about your personality traits, either, but about the choices you make to honour another person’s humanity instead of simply pursuing your own interests at their expense.

But the other thing about fruits is they aren’t dramatic. You know what is? Gifts. It’s hard to miss when someone is gifted, especially when it’s in ways that are prized within a community. Talent and skill, whether it’s at talking, or in making money, or being charming or attractive or smart—any of those things are hard to miss. And we respond accordingly.

Think for a moment about the people who tend to be most popular: they’re almost always people gifted in some way.

And yet…

And yet, somehow, when you meet these people (some of them, anyway), it’s surprising how the thing you come away with is an awareness of how humble or approachable or easy to talk to they were. Think of someone like Keanu Reeves, well known for The Matrix and John Wick franchises, but also just as well known for being incredibly thoughtful and kind to people who have interacted with him.

There’s a reason you’re advised not to meet your heroes, after all.

And that’s why it struck me that, among all the tributes to Tim Keller, this incredibly gifted man, whose books sold in the millions and whose preaching reached millions more—the thing that comes through the most is his character. People have shared about his empathy, his kindness, how he welcomed hard questions, listened to people no matter how ordinary, and showed generosity to his harshest critics (some of whom became lifelong friends). The way he lived.

Not his gifts, but his fruit.

It’s a reminder of what matters most, isn’t it?

We aren’t all equally gifted, and that’s okay. As I wrote in a previous essay, there’s something to be said for being average. But we can all give of ourselves, of our time and our hearts.

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Her son and his friends were on their way to school when they came upon an injured mouse. They figured someone had accidentally stepped on it, but they didn't feel good about just leaving it there. So they put together a makeshift stretcher, put the mouse on it and took it to the nearest vet. (“The poor vet!” said their mum to me.)

The vet was bemused, to put it mildly, but said they could leave it with him, and his team would look after it. Only then did they withdraw. My friend said she impressed herself with how she kept a straight face and, as she put it, “an appropriately grave and sympathetic expression!”

It’s the story of the Good Samaritan, isn’t it—except this time with a mouse. And, of course, my friend was justifiably proud of her boy, even as she recognised that as hard work as she’s worked raising them, there’s an element of their growth that even she can’t take credit for.

That’s the thing about life, right? You do all you can to make things work that you care about, and when you’re successful, you know you can’t take credit for all of it—but it also wouldn’t have happened without you doing what you did.

Like I wrote at the start of the essay, The Significant 1%: “There’s very little in life, and in our own lives, that we’re in control of—but that little matters.”

The “little” you contribute is significant. Don’t ever forget that.

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Easier to “love” people than a person

Did you know, by the way, that the original story of the Good Samaritan was in the context of what it means to “love your neighbour”, which is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

The idea of loving your neighbour sounds simple enough on the face of it. But countless things that seem simple only appear so until you try to actually practice them. The thing about loving your neighbour is that it’s super specific. It’s not about good feelings about people in general or thinking nicely of some abstract community. It’s about one particular person that you have the opportunity to interact with in whatever here and now you’re in.

Which of us hasn’t had the experience of missing somebody and feeling warmly about them—only to meet them again and remember how much they grate on our nerves? And the thing is, that doesn’t mean you don’t care about them, it just means people are complicated, and that can make them hard to love.

Fyodor Dostoevsky put it best in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov (affiliate link):

The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.

Loving your “neighbour” is where the rubber meets the road.

A legendary experience

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom over the past week since it launched. It’s such a great game: from gameplay to the slightly improved graphics and the superb score, but also the moments of wonder and humour that keep popping up. And there are plenty of puzzles that are, as always, gratifying to figure out.

Nintendo has a hit on its hands. They already announced that it sold 10 million copies in its first three days, making it the fastest-selling Zelda game ever. For context, the game it succeeds, Breath of the Wild, sold just under 30 million in 6 years—the sequel has sold a third of that in just three days.

https://twitter.com/nintendoamerica/status/1658819667492851713

Wild.

The funny thing is, as things like graphics go, it’s a solidly underpowered game. It couldn’t measure up to what “serious gamers” play on gaming PCs or consoles like the PlayStation 5. But it’s proof that people care about more than just that—because you know what the game certainly delivers on?

A fantastic experience, filled with moments of wonder and delight.

That’s why I wrote in my latest essay that Nintendo is like Apple in how their focus on delivering great experiences is core to understanding their success.

If you haven’t read that yet, check it out here: Apple and Nintendo Succeed by “Being Human.”

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The problem with that is we don’t tend to notice when things go right. We assume that’s what should happen. This past couple of weeks alone, my deliveries have included coffee from Pact, Faith in Nature shampoo and conditioner, souvlakis on Deliveroo—and today, my preordered copy of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Each has gone entirely without event, allowing me to move on to whatever’s next.

Except something goes wrong.

Like, recently, when I was assured a moisturiser I’d ordered on Amazon was delivered, but I never saw it. I did get refunded and was able to re-order, but not everyone is so lucky. All that to say, we notice when things go wrong—as we should because then we can do something about it. And we get understandably upset when they stay wrong.

It’s worth taking time to be glad for all the times things go right and for all the people who help keep our lives uneventful.

I used to know someone who thought they should only give five stars to couriers and cab drivers who went above and beyond. This person thought there was no need to give them more than 3 or 4 for “just doing their job.”

I disagreed then, and still do. People doing their job isn’t a “just.” As I mentioned ina previous essay, good enough is good enough. And sure, delight is great, but let’s not sneer at uneventful experiences. And making that happen are countless people taking on a bunch of complexity to ensure we get simplicity.

To quote the best definition of admin I’ve ever heard, from a friend years ago:

Admins are the people who make things happen for the people who make things happen.

Keeping things uneventful is no small feat. So over the next week, consider taking a minute to thank the people in your life who keep things moving and without drama—the people who make things happen for you to make things happen. And maybe also consider what you can help make happen for them.

And I hope you, too, are appreciated for whatever ways you do that for others.

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🍎 Apple, Nintendo and you (again)

Well, not really “again”. I talked about Apple and Nintendo in my 84th Note, and I said I’d be expanding my ideas on the subject into an essay. Well, it’s up now, and even nicer, it’s been boosted on Medium, which is always lovely—a little signal that someone thinks what I shared deserves a bit more attention. After spending three weeks composing the essay, I can assure you any extra validation is welcome!

Here’s an excerpt from near the start of the essay:

The greatest over the latest

“A delayed game is eventually good. A bad game is bad forever.”— Shigeru Miyamoto

Both companies prioritise delivering great experiences at a profit. Note those last five words: great experience at a profit. You see what’s missing there, don’t you?

Specs.

The two companies are obsessed with delivering great experiences, but you know what else they take very seriously? Making money. And all the more because both have historically come close to closing shop.

You know the saying, “Fast, good, cheap — pick two”? In this case, it’s more like, “Experience, specs, profit — pick two.”

Read the whole thing here: Apple and Nintendo Succeed by “Being Human”

🌍 Regular Earth vibes

I recently came across the weirdest, most intruiging tidbit of information—the kind that feels like it could be the start of some fascinating sci-fi, except it’s all entirely real. And yes, I got intrigued enough to follow it into a rabbit hole. I learned it courtesy of Andrew Alli on Twitter (protected account), and it goes thus:

Every 26 seconds, like clockwork, a tiny vibration occurs in the earth, from just off the coast of Nigeria.

And by tiny, I mean so tiny, it wasn’t discovered until 1961—six decades ago— by researcher Jack Oliver, who later helped prove continental drift. And get this—he did it all with paper records! He worked out that these vibes were stronger in what would be summer in the UK, and that their source was somewhere in the Atlantic. But the research went forgotten until 2011 when it was traced more specifically to the Bight of Bonny.

And it gets stranger. You see, no one agrees on what’s causing it: one theory argues for waves hitting the coast, another for volcanoes, but neither explains why it doesn’t happen anywhere else.

It’s very curious stuff, and I love how reality is so often as strange as anything we could make up—and sometimes even stranger. (Want more on this? Start with this 2020 article.)

I’ll leave you with a great XKCD comic that has fun with the idea:

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I like the book because it gets down to first principles, which is how I prefer to learn. Here’s one quote early on that I really liked:

I would like to disabuse the reader of any simple notion of science, specifically “positivism”: the view that science consists of positive facts, piled one upon another, each of which represents an absolute truth or an independent reality, our business being simply to discover those truths or realities. This is simply not the case. Science is much more complex. For the past century scientists and philosophers have debated this matter, and it comes down to this: Facts cannot be separated from theories; science involves deduction, not just induction. In this way, no facts are observed without a preceding hypothesis.

I’ve written quite a bit recently about epistemic humility. Ghaemi also advocates it here: we tend to view science as a means of confirming information, but its strength is ruling things out. In other words, we should see science as a process to identify what we’re wrong about. But even when we’re armed with facts, we can weave them into a false narrative. As he points out, facts don’t mean anything in themselves.

The meaning of facts is embedded in the story we make of them.

It’s worth remembering that our story might always be wrong, even when we’re right about the facts.

That’s why Mark Twain quipped, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Next time someone tells you, “That’s just the facts,” feel free to ask, “Well, what’s the story?”

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Medicines as superpowers

Speaking of stories, there’s an unfortunately common narrative about medications that I run into far too often in my work.

At the centre of the narrative, which is more prevalent in mental illness, is a belief that the need for medication is a weakness. Of course, some of this is because people desire to overcome mental illness through effort. But given that it’s not uncommon for people to take alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and other substances to deal with mental disorders, I suspect there’s also some suspicion of medicine involved.

The sad thing is most people instinctively understand that medication is an essential element in the fight against physical illnesses. I’ve yet to meet anyone with cancer, diabetes or pain problems who feels like they’re being weak or requiring treatment or even surgery. It’s a narrative that only shows up in mental health.

In talking to patients, I use analogies to help them see things differently. One I’ve used a few times is that of transport: it’s all well and good to be able to walk, but if you have to travel hundreds of kilometres, you don’t hesitate to use a car or train, or if you’re looking at thousands, a plane, even. No one would consider that a failing. If for some reason—injury, disability, illness—you couldn’t walk, all those options would remain available.

In general, we understand that transport is a superpower, and we take full advantage of it to go farther, or faster, or just go at all when we can’t. So maybe it’s time we start to see medication similarly, especially in mental health?

Tiny sci-fi stories

Still on stories, I discovered a brilliant Twitter account via a post on Jason Kottke’s website: @smllwrlds. Starting New Year’s Day 2023, this incredible person has posted a daily image that contains a small sci-fi story.

https://twitter.com/smllwrlds/status/1609572292346150912

It’s fantastic work. The art is haunting and beautiful, and the writing is powerful. It’s a great example of using constraints as a launching pad for creativity, in the vein of a bet Ernest Hemingway once reputedly accepted to write the shortest story possible, which he won with a six-word story: “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”

The creator has revealed they plan to make them into a book—I’m totally getting that the minute it comes out! Go check them all out at the account on Twitter: @smllwrlds. Here are some of my favourites:

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Last Sunday, I was with some friends, talking over burgers and The Banker on Apple TV+ (good film, by the way!) when everyone's phones went off in alarm.

We all looked at each other, confused, for maybe three seconds, before we suddenly remembered the notice we'd all got going back at least two weeks that this would happen. This was, in fact, a drill. The government had announced they'd be testing an emergency alert system.

Although this was nationwide, the plan is for the alarms to be location-focused. (The UK.gov website gives examples of severe flooding, fire and extreme weather, but of course, there are a few missing, possibly nationwide options one hopes we will never need.) They'll be sent via masts to every nearby phone (even if silent), so you get them based on where you are and without the government needing to identify you or your location.

How times have changed, right? In the World War, air raid sirens were how the government warned people of incoming danger, and they remained viable throughout the Cold War. Now we all have smartphones, these powerful computers we carry everywhere we go—even if yours is dead, it's improbable someone near you won’t have one. It just makes a lot more sense to use them. The new phone alerts also provide a link to what's happening and what you should do, which air raid sirens couldn't do.

And with that, the computers we used to think of as just "phones" have replaced yet another old technology.

The new air raid sirens are in your pocket.

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Fighting back with humility

I had an essay published last weekend: Your Most Powerful Weapon Against Your Inner Critic is… Humility. It's about what I call the creative paradox: the challenge of putting our energy into making things when we can't reliably predict their value.

Here's how it begins:

What if the secret to creativity is…

…humility?

Bear with me, I’m going somewhere.

It’s well known that it’s hard to be creative when our inner critic is in full force. Ideas are fragile things, especially when they’re new or still forming, and they don’t long withstand the withering gaze of criticism. Like the seeds they are, they need the dark, away from direct sunlight, while they take shape in the soil of our minds.

Except, that’s a lot of effort to put into something you’re not sure will prove useful.…

What if ideas have to be nurtured, not because we know for sure they’ll be valuable, but precisely because we don’t?

Keep reading here:

My latest essay

Opening up to surprise…

It’s easy, when you don’t like someone, to simply ignore them, but there’s another choice it’s worth being aware of:

"One person says, “I don’t like that man; therefore I will not speak to him. When and if my feelings change, I will speak.” Another says, “I don’t like that person; therefore I am going to speak to him.” The person, surprised at the friendliness, cheerfully responds and suddenly friendliness is shared."

— Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

Many things sound simple enough to understand but are hard enough to practice that we don't often find them. This is one. We all meet people we don't like now and then. We don't like how they talk, how they act, how they engage, and sometimes (to our shame) even how they look. And if we're being honest, there are people you don't like, and you can't even articulate why.

Of course, the instinctive reaction is to not speak to people like that any more than you have to.

And, while I wouldn't encourage you to ignore your instincts, it's worth remembering that our instincts, like so much else about us, are far from infallible. We sometimes get things wrong. Some of the richest friendships I've had are with people who I didn't take to at first sight or who didn't take to me. So, sure, acknowledge your feelings, don't dismiss them, but also push past them now and then because you never know when you (and the other person) will be pleasantly surprised.

Imagine what we miss out on otherwise.

I’ve had the connection on my mind for a while, but feared I might be overthinking it. Then I listened to a podcast deep dive (more on which later) into Nintendo’s history, and the more I learned about Nintendo, the more I noticed how similar they are to Apple.

I’ll definitely do a more complete essay on this, but here are a few of the similarities—keep an eye out as you read for a thread running through:

• Both chose early on to transcend their industries. Nintendo, with the first Donkey Kong, introduced art and storytelling to video games. Apple introduced the idea of computers as tools not just for doing work, but also making art.

• Both are very focused on profitably delivering great experiences over claiming best-in-class specs, and fully embrace the associated trade-offs: while they’ll use the best tech they can, if they can deliver a great experience with older tech while still making good money, they won’t hesitate to irrespective of criticism. They actually pride themselves on their ability to make the most of seemingly constrained technology.

• In lieu of focusing on measurable specs, both companies have historically focused on things that can’t be measured: delight or fun, intuitive ease of use, earning customer trust (and therefore loyalty). For both, innovation in tech is only useful to the degree that it enables innovation in experience.

• The focus on customer experience means that design matters, and both companies are well known for having been first in their industries to have design lead engineering, rather than follow. And that means for both companies that great taste is at least as important as spreadsheets.

• The obsession with experience has had them always leaning toward controlling the whole system. This desire often gets framed as merely for profit, but while it’s profitable when it works, it’s also often led them to leave money on the table.

• The focus on experiences has also led them to repeatedly create products that unlocked entirely new markets away from industry competitors, and in which they are practically monopolies. Nintendo has mostly owned the portable console market (Game Boy, then Switch) and Apple practically owns the smartwatch and tablet markets—loyal customers included.

• Because of how contrarian both are, everyone keeps expecting their approach to fail, but even when they’ve had massive failures, both have come back to amazing new success. As an unnamed video game exec reportedly put it: “We’ve all thought Nintendo was going to go out of business for the last 20 years.” And of course, “Apple is doomed” headlines have never gone out of fashion.

See the common thread?

By focusing on delivering great experiences and therefore prioritising design, great taste and other immeasurables, Nintendo and Apple put being human at the forefront of their vision of business. And if that sounds silly, well, you can see why it’s not readily copied, and why industry watchers tend to expect their imminent downfall.

To me, though, their success represents proof to me that caring, and especially caring about our humanness, matters, from the greatest of businesses to our everyday lives.

Caring is infectious

The podcast on which I learned about all this was the Acquired podcast, and I only came to know of it when its Nintendo episodes were recommended in an online discussion about the new Mario film. But here’s the crazy thing: the two episodes (here and here) are each over 3 hours long.

Yeah, you read that right. Three hours.

But my goodness, does that time pass quick! These guys know their business, but even better, you can tell they enjoy what they do. Listening to them talk about Nintendo’s history, you quickly find yourself invested in knowing what went down. And they also throw in these little details—like, did you know Nintendo started out making card games, most likely for Japanese mafia gambling?

Honestly, give it a listen: just the first half hour (or hour, if you’re up to it). Even if you stop after that, I think you’ll find it far more interesting than you’d expect.

It’s a reminder of how infectious it is to care deeply about something. Not everyone will catch it—some of my friends didn’t see what I was so excited about—but like with any virus (in this case, a good one) those who are susceptible will catch it.

I think you’ll find that while caring deeply about stuff may push some away, you’ll find that those who’re drawn to you form far stronger connections.

My armour, mi amor

Meanwhile, speaking of essays that started as an idea in these Notes on Being Human, my essay this week started just that way.

Note 80: Without armour…or not at all

If you’re curious to see how the way I wrote about this changed from newsletter to essay, feel free to click the link.

Being vulnerable is risky.

I think about that a lot in my work, which frequently has me exploring with people the less-pleasant aspects of themselves. And then while recently watching the new season of Shadow and Bone on Netflix (a fantasy series based on a set of YA novels—mild spoilers coming up), I heard a line that resonated deeply. The context was of a character with a history of keeping closed off rather than risk being vulnerable, in response to which another character said:

I will have you without your armour… Or I will not have you at all.”

That got me thinking about the clothes that we wear underneath armour, and our nakedness underneath that. And the whole thing got me thinking about an old story.

Read the whole thing here:

Taking off your (emotional) clothes is hard: A reflection on shame and vulnerability

https://docayomide.com/shame

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That’s one of the many sayings from medical school that’s stuck with me. And the idea was apparently taken so seriously, our exams were structured to penalise us for guessing, marking us down by an extra half-mark for every wrong answer. That meant if you answered five questions and got two wrong, the extra half-marks for those two added up to one mark taken out of the three you got right, leaving you with only two. They basically made it impossible to guess your way to a pass.

We learned quickly to leave questions we weren’t reasonably sure of.

However you feel about that, it’s a valuable lesson in epistemic humility—humility about our knowledge (and more often, lack thereof). We all know what it’s like to act like we know what we’re doing when we really don’t. But epistemic humility is about being honest with yourself about what you don’t know, rather than acting like you do.

The interesting thing is, it doesn’t mean you don’t act anyway—you just act with the acknowledgement of your ignorance. And that’s surprisingly freeing.

It also means you’re in a position to actually learn something new.

What’s a note, but an idea persevering?

So Substack just launched a new feature called Substack Notes, where I’d love for you to join me. Here’s the first one I published on there:

Notes is a new space hosted by Substack where you and I can share quick thoughts: links, quotes, photos, whatever. A bit like Twitter, but saner and more focused on conversations between newsletter writers and readers. You can join with this link, or via the “Notes” tab in Substack’s app. As a subscriber to Notes On Being Human, you’ll automatically see my notes—feel free to like, reply, share! 😃

I think this could become a great little way for us to catch up during the week. I’ll share sneak peeks, quotes, thoughts and questions, and I hope you too share yours from whatever you’re reading, watching, experiencing or wondering about.

Try it out? (Do tag me if you do!)

Go to Notes

(As I point out in another Substack Note, the irony does not escape me that “Notes” are also my name for these weekly newsletters. So I either need to somehow differentiate them from my Notes on Substack, or else change my newsletter name. Except, I like my newsletter name.)

Speaking of notes, though…

Steve Jobs is back

The Steve Jobs Archive recently announced a free ebook (and website) of notes and letters from the Apple founder. Or, as they put it, “Steve Jobs in his own words.” It’s really worth checking out—the website experience especially is simply delightful, even if you only have time to read a few pages.

It’s designed “to inspire readers to make their own ‘wonderful somethings’ that move the world forward,” which is just how it made me feel. As the first quote from Jobs puts it:

"There’s lots of ways to be, as a person. And some people express their deep appreciation in different ways. But one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there.

That’s the name of the book: Make Something Wonderful, and I love the idea that putting out what you make is how you give back to the world and to humanity. And both matter:

• make something wonderful

• put it out

Both steps require you to face the fear of being unable to make something wonderful, and of nobody caring what you put out. But facing those fears is part of the point. And when you do—when we, as Jobs puts it, express our appreciation in that way—you might be surprised who responds with appreciation back.

Connection happens when you share your creativity.

You can get it directly on Apple Books, but the website itself is an even more beautiful way to read it—click the image below to check it out:

I leave you with two questions:

• What have you made that you hesitate to put out there?

• How can you try to push back against that fear?

This week was the 50th anniversary of the first telephone call ever made, on 3 April 1973.

The call was from a Motorola engineer named Marty Cooper to another engineer at a rival company to tell him they had created a handheld, portable phone. That rival company was Bell Labs, and their focus had been on making car phones (remember those?), while Motorola was convinced handheld phones were the future. Even so, it took Motorola another 11 years to make a version they could actually sell, the Dynatac 8000X—which as a BBC article notes, looks little like our modern phones.

That 1984 Dynatac was heavy, at just under 800g (4 times the weight of an iPhone 14), and all it let you do was make calls—forget texting or camera. Even so, you could talk for only 30 minutes before the battery died, and then you’d need 10 hours to recharge. And even if you simply left it lying around, you’d still have to charge it twice a day to keep it from dying. And for all that you’d have to pay £9,500 or $11,700 in today’s money.

We complain a lot about the prices of modern smartphones, but they’re incredibly cheap by comparison, especially when you consider how much more they’re capable of. Next year, it’ll be 40 years since that first cell phone—in that time, we’ve gone from that Dynatac to modern smartphones. With phones that disappear into a pocket, we take incredible photos, stay connected to loved ones anywhere in the world, share all kinds of documents and media, and even talk to AI assistants that are about to become incredibly powerful.

In 40 years, the things we grew up seeing in sci-fi stories are our everyday reality. What a time to be alive.

The flip side of adapting

Adapting to things is our superpower as humans. It’s what allows us to be able to live in any environment on this planet, and adapt to all kinds of change: physical, social and increasingly technological. It’s also how we get on with our day-to-day lives. We get used to things, we learn to live with them, we move on no matter what.

And that applies to both awful and amazing things.

That right there is the flip side of our adapting superpower: it also makes it easy for us to take things for granted. Sure, on one hand, we can’t seriously go “Wow!” at stuff all the time—no matter how breathtaking anything is, we do have to get on with life. And we forget how astounding things are and how lucky we are to get to live in the time we live in, while we go on stressing about all that’s changed or broken.

But two things can be true: the world can be broken in many ways, and we can still be able to reflect on how incredible it is, even in its broken state. This paradoxical perennial combination of brokenness and beauty is a key tension within Christianity as I’ve come to understand it, but one that probably resonates with anyone, Christian or not. And although it’s difficult to live in, it’s also necessary to live in it. To recognise the brokenness of things, while also being able to be grateful for and delight in the beauty that persists still.

It’s worth taking a step back now and then to look again at things we take for granted and say, “Wow.”

Another year around the sun

Speaking of things to be wowed about (for me, anyway), today marks another year of my life. I’m not exactly one for big birthday dos, but birthdays do offer an opportunity to reflect on life’s big questions, while also appreciating its little delights, like good coffee, good books, and good friends.

As it turns out, today also happens to coincide with Good Friday, the day Christians remember and reflect on the death of Christ. The meaning of “good”there is in the old sense of “holy” or “pious” (like in “good book”) but I like to think of it as also reflective of the combination of beauty and brokenness: the idea that an otherwise tragic event really represents a new beginning.

So today, among other things, I’m thinking about the things that are broken in my life and the things that are beautiful, but especially about the bits of beauty that have sprouted from brokenness. That’s worth being grateful for.

Where, for you, has beauty sprouted from brokenness? Please let me know in the chats (you’ll need to download the Substack app for that).

It’s often the case that the more potentially brilliant a thing is at its best, the more potentially disastrous it can be if it were to go bad. I first got that idea from CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity, where he argues that the potential of any creature, and especially humans, cuts both ways, for good and ill. For Lewis, humans are capable of so much catastrophe precisely because we’re capable of so much beauty and wonder.

Potential, meet peril.

I’ve since found that idea insightful, and applicable to many other things. It helps me remember when things hurt, that sometimes, it’s precisely their potential to be great that makes their brokenness so painful. Take relationships: the more intimate they get, the more hurt we are exposed to. But on the other hand, as we looked at in last week’s Note, the more we minimise our exposure to pain, the more we also shut ourselves off from the richness that’s possible when we let ourselves be vulnerable.

I thought of this again recently at a meeting where someone was arguing that social media is “just bad for humans.”

Now, on one hand, it’s hardly debatable that social media has facilitated a lot of terribleness. But so have knives, and fire, and cars—all of which kill people every day, but all of which are also wonderful tools that make our everyday life possible—cooking, comfort, commuting. Similarly, social media has also unleashed an incredible amount of human creativity through the connections and collaboration it’s made possible.

Social media is how I talk to my parents back in Nigeria (via WhatsApp), how I found and keep in touch with an online writing community, how youth in my country (and others) have mobilised again and again, how you might well have found my writing and are reading these very words.

We need to keep thinking hard about social media not simply because it’s “bad” but because it’s powerful. Reframing it that way allows us to move from an unhelpfully reductive stance of “How do we stop this new thing?” to a more useful, “How do we make the most of this for human flourishing?”

Sure, it’s possible the answer might still come to, “The benefits aren’t worth the risk.” But I’d be hard-pressed to take that answer seriously from someone who hasn’t shown a good grasp of the benefits, who can’t see that potential often cuts both ways.

Maximising Medium

(Not my best pun, but it’ll have to do!)

You might have noticed that I’ve shared the last couple of my essay links from Medium. The essays are on my website too, of course—my website is my online home, the place where you can find all my writing if you want to have a poke around. But I’m prioritising Medium because whereas before I used to imagine I’d somehow gain an audience for the website directly, I’m realising more and more that it’s much smarter to make the most of the inbuilt audience Medium offers.

I learned that from reading a book by Mark Ellis, who I first found via his YouTube channeland then got to know a bit better after joining his Discord (one of a very few online communities I’m active in). He is also very active on Medium and wrote said book about it. I also joined his recently launched course to learn more but also connect with other Medium writers, and our first assignment was an essay on why we joined.

Which became my essay for this week. Here’s the opening:

I signed up to Mark Ellis’ Medium Academy because I need help. This is my story.

I’ve written online for years, including on Medium, and while I’ve grown in my writing, I’ve also struggled to share it more widely. It’s the perennial creative paradox of longing for your work to be seen while simultaneously fearing the spotlight. And although I originally decided to write this as part of our first assignment for the course, I quickly realised it’s a story I’d never publicly shared before now. This changes that.

Read the whole thing here:

What’s your face for?

Circling back to social media’s problems, the best thing I read this week was an essay by Addie Page on the “real problem with TikTok’s ’glamour’ filter”—a filter that’s become recently popular for how it “beautifies” people. It was great because she digs beneath the obvious issues of beauty standards or AI to something deeper: our expectations for faces, and especially female faces. She argues:

My point is: most people believe that the #1 job of a female face is to make others feel comfortable.…

That was the killer line for me. And as she goes on to argue in her closing lines, maybe we should stop worrying about how beautiful or desirable we are, and focus instead on what she argues our faces really are for beyond pleasing other people:

Because it’s not your face’s job to comfort. Its job is to communicate.

Faces can be vehicles for meaning—why would we reduce them to less?

The whole essay is worth reading, so do check it out.

Some of that’s because of my work, which frequently has me exploring with people the less-pleasant aspects of themselves. And then this week, while watching the new season of Shadow and Bone on Netflix (a fantasy series based on a set of YA novels), I heard a line that resonated deeply. One character said to another:

I will have you without your armour… Or I will not have you at all.”

The context was that the character being spoken to had a history of keeping closed off rather than risk being vulnerable.

The Bible opens with a story about a man and a woman who are described as, “both naked, but not ashamed”. But then they mess up and try to pass on blame rather than take responsibility, and shame suddenly appears in the picture. They end up clothed: covering up in front of each other, afraid and ashamed to be truly vulnerable.

You can see how that’s all of us still. A lot of effort in relationships goes into figuring out how “naked” we can afford to be. There are people with whom we are comfortable “wearing little”, and others with whom we will not turn up in anything less than “fully clothed”.

But as that line from the show indicates, to protect themselves, people sometimes go beyond clothes to full-on armour. In the show, the character with the “armour” had experienced severe trauma, which is in fact what often underlies people feeling the need for armour. Experiencing loss of agency, or to continue with the clothes metaphor, being stripped—made “naked” against your will, sometimes literally—leaves a person feeling violated. When able to clothe themselves again, it’s not surprising that there’s a desire for stronger, more protective clothing. For armour.

The problem, as with any kind of protection, is that keeping things out tends to entail keeping yourself in. Fences can too easily become prison walls, and armour can too readily become insulation. As CS Lewis so astutely pointed out, to protect ourselves from the possibility of pain and loss will also mean cutting ourselves off from the possibility of joy and love. There is no intimacy without the risk of being hurt.

Understandably, if you’ve been “stripped”, you might well consider that a perfectly acceptable trade-off. For those who want more though, who long to learn to be vulnerable again, that involves coming back to relationships: whether that’s with loved ones, good friends, or a therapist or counsellor. Those relationships can become a safe space within which you can relearn trust and start to take the risk of taking the armour off again, one bit at a time, and maybe eventually even getting to taking the clothes off.

And with time, it might even be possible again to be “naked” without shame. The process is never easy, but progress is possible.

We all have bits we cover with armour, and bits we cover with clothes.

The cycle of life

Speaking of being vulnerable, something I’ve been doing a bit more this year is submitting essays to publications on Medium. It feels risky because there’s always that possibility of having your work rejected, isn’t there? Anyway, I had an essay published this week in the Better Humans publication, about what learning to cycle as an adult has taught me about life in general.

Here’s a bit from the opening:

I’ve wanted to learn to cycle since I was a child, so I’m really a few decades late here. (There was that one time when I’d tried a couple years ago, but after two hours of falling and failing to move my friend’s bike — and despite his immense patience — I felt no closer to being able to cycle than when I began.) I don’t regret it, though, because it turns out that there’s value to learning stuff as an adult that most people are expected to learn as children.

As a beautiful Nigerian saying puts it: “Whenever you wake up is your morning.”

Check the essay out below. If you’d be so kind as to clap, leave comments and share it—well, stuff like that factors into Medium’s decisions about what to share more widely, so I’d be very much obliged to you.

Go to the essay

Yep, one of the best written and beautifully acted and most hope-filled shows you’ve ever seen is back.

If you haven’t seen Ted Lasso, you really have no idea what you’re missing. It’s a show that starts off with seemingly cliché characters and over the course of each season deepens them in the most unexpected, yet completely believable ways. And it holds up on multiple rewatches too because the writers are really clever, and you get to see how early a lot of stuff is foreshadowed. (One theme to look out for is how the show explores the fatherhood.)

The early reviews are great, too, and as of this writing, the show is 94% on Rotten Tomatoes! As one reviewer put it, it’s a great “return to form.” As usual for most shows on Apple TV+, episodes drop weekly, which I like because then I get to process each new episode separately, and chats about it with friends. The last episode lands May 31, which makes 2½ months of delight to look forward to!

Believe!

You know what else drops weekly and is better with friends? Yep, this newsletter.👇🏾

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Envy and being human

I’ve been thinking a lot about envy (essay coming up, of course!). There’s a Bible verse that has this to say about it:

“Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbour. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.” (‭‭Ecclesiastes‬ ‭4‬:‭4‬ ‭ESV‬‬)

I first read that twenty years ago, and it continues to resonate deeply. Envy is a funny thing though: it’s an emotion we all experience, right from our childhood, but one almost no one will ever admit to. Anger, sure. Fear, sometimes. Even shame we can bring ourselves to admit to in the right scenarios. But envy? Oh, no.

But there’s more. Note, too, that envy, as described in that verse, isn’t directed at just anyone, but specifically at our “neighbour”. We are most envious of those we feel most similar to. Which of us, if we’re being honest, hasn’t felt a little twinge when our best friends or family or former classmates have achieved some success we had deeply longed for but found elusive?

Few things hurt so much as people you see as “not better than” you getting what you can’t seem to grasp.

And it’s that closeness—the fact that it’s our “neighbour” we’re most envious of—that perhaps makes it so hard to even admit to.

One person who deeply understood the power of envy was recently late French historian and philosopher Rene Girard. He described humans as not just fundamentally driven by desire, but specifically by desire for things that others desire. It’s what advertisements play on: by showing us how desired by others an object it, they stoke that desire in us. Even in romance, we desire people more when others also do. And of course, it’s at the root of FOMO: the fear of missing out that makes us want to know things “everyone” seems to be talking about.

Girard called this tendency of ours “mimetic desire” to capture the imitative nature of it and described this as something fundamentally unique to humans: we copy not just behaviours, but desires.

We envy.

Perhaps a first step to not being consumed by it is at least admitting that to ourselves.

“You’re right” (and 139 other bits of advice)

I read a popular article this week (although it was published early Feb) which I found because one blogger was complaining about it. Some criticism was broad (“How dare they think to tell everyone what to do?”), while some was focused more specifically on particular bits of advice.

I found that interesting because I had the impression, on reading it, that it was intended as tongue in cheek. An early line about the rules being “rigid, but not entirely inflexible” is followed by an admission that some rules didn’t really work in their initial form when they tried to live them! And an early rule says this:

6. Never wake up your significant other on purpose, ever. And don’t turn on the lights when they’re asleep. Jet-lagged and want to talk? Don’t do it. Think someone is coming in to kill you? Work it out yourself.

That was funny. But there’s also genuinely useful stuff, like my favourite one:

27. The proper response to being told something you already know isn’t “I know.” It’s “You’re right.”

That’s something I intend to remember going forward. I’ve noticed that “I know” can sometimes come off as dismissive, especially in sensitive situations. I’ve sometimes said “You’re right”, but also “I see that” (not always helpful), or just “Yeah,” but never thought too deeply about it. But seeing it framed in the article, I was immediately struck by the difference in framing. “I know” focuses on me and my knowledge, but “You’re right” focuses on the other person, affirming and validating them before saying whatever else I’m thinking.

In a sensitive situation, I know I’d rather affirm the other person than sound dismissive.

A few others I liked (with my comments in parentheses):

• 13. It’s never too late to send a condolence note. (A good reminder.)

• 38. Always wink. (Need I say more?)

• 78. Don’t talk about a movie when leaving the theatre. (Not something I’ve really thought about before, but it makes sense.)

• 121. Sit down and respond to an email, even if it’s a year late. (I actually have a particular email I need to overcome my shame and send.)

• 140. Don’t post RIPs for celebrities. (I disagreed with this one and the given reason.)

Okay, that’s enough from me, you go read the whole thing yourself—it’s great. And let me know which you found most useful.

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Every few months, we get medical students through at work for their psychiatry posting. And every so often one of them is describing a patient being discharged from hospital, and they use the R word: “Release.”

They say a patient was “released” from hospital rather than “discharged”.

I don’t let that pass when it happens. Not to have a go at them, but because it always provides a great opportunity to remind them of the power of language. So I remind them that the words we use both reflect our thinking and reinforce it. And that it’s not by accident that the word “release” comes to mind for them when describing what in any other medical context they’d describe as “discharge”. It’s the language of police arrests and prison sentences. And the fact that they use it not only reflects how mental healthcare gets perceived, but also reinforces it for them.

There are so many others: immigrant/expatriate, protest/riot, terrorist/lone shooter, crash/accident. Each of those word pairs are synonyms, but which of each pair you pick in any given case says something about the societal view of the issue you buy into. And so perhaps says more about you than the thing you’re using it to describe.

Noticing the things we say can be one of the best ways to learn about our own minds.

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More on crash versus accident

We talk about planes crashing, never that there’s a “plane accident”. But somehow, “car accident” has become a commonly acceptable term. Ever wondered why?

This article argues that didn’t just happen, but came about by deliberate effort from car companies.

Media coverage in the early 1900s apparently depicted cars as dangerous killing machines, creating public backlash against cars—and by extension against the rich people who owned them. By the 1920s, carmakers were responding by pushing for laws to define streets as belonging to cars rather than people walking. Then they made crossing the street a crime. Then they worked to shape news coverage by offering a free service for newspapers that let reporters send in info about crashes, and have a full ready-to-print article within a day.

Those articles did two things: blamed the pedestrians instead of the driver, and used the word “accident.”

And here we are.

Consider this 2006 article from the NYT.

The paper described the incident as deliberate, yet twice—twice!—calls it an “accident.”

I’m not making fun of the NYT here. It’s a paper that, however you might feel about it, is highly respected for its attention to detail and style in writing. The point is that even the NYT fell for the bait-and-switch that began in the early 1900s.

That’s how deeply a word can sink its claws into your brain.

But that works both ways.

Books are magic

Words are wonderful things. They can be almost landmines, sure, but they can also be lifelines. Probably everyone has at least one memory of someone saying something to you that changed the course of your life in ways you’re still grateful for.

And in a brilliant paragraph, Carl Sagan captures how books can be magic, not just by being a vehicle for words, but by being a storage for them as well. Books allow words to transcend space and time and reach anyone anywhere at any time.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

— Carl Sagan

Would you believe, though, that when I shared that quote in one WhatsApp group, someone thought it was wrong? They argued that audio and videos had come to be more important than words. I pointed out that many video creators start with writing a script first, and then get responses to that via comments. Even TikTok creators still often add captions to their videos. But I forgot to mention something even more important: a lot of audiovisual media gets forgotten within a week. Good ones might last months, but even the best films are forgotten by many within decades. But books? Books have been around for centuries, the best ones lasting even millennia.

Wouldn’t bet against a book if I were you.

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We had elections in Nigeria this past weekend. As is sadly too familiar, the process was rife with reports of rigging and results tampering. So even with the announcement of a president-elect, at least one candidate promises to contest results in court.

I didn’t get to vote because Nigeria unfortunately has no such options available for those of us in the diaspora. But amid all the drama, it’s made me glad to see the way young people have been active through the elections, especially considering that I’ve lived through a time in Nigeria of apathy that infected even the youths.

But I’m also grateful that the process is improving, however slowly: despite all the issues in our last elections, I think it’s fair to say that rigging has proved more and more difficult, and people are also more and more invested in monitoring for it, in a way that makes me really proud. We saw two new systems deployed for voter accreditation and election result viewing, both of which had issues, but also made exposed previously invisible issues.

Overall, then, people were more invested and the process was more transparent. Even with all the issues, that’s nothing to sneer at. We may not be where we’d like to be yet, and we may even be moving very slowly, but we are moving, and that’s something.

As I’ve come to learn, once you realise progress isn’t inevitable, you don’t take it for granted, however little.

Humble Apple

So, I published an essay about Apple as a company that uses "humility as a business model”—which is a quote from one of my favourite tech business analysts. (Yes, that’s something I follow—you didn’t know?) It was the difficult essay I talked about last week. The challenge was, while Apple makes products 2 billion people love, there’s a lot of people who feel strongly against them, friends of mine included.

It’s important to me to write respectfully even of people I disagree with, and although people sometimes feel disrespected anyway, I at least wanted to satisfy myself that I’d done my best to be fair. At least one friend still found it disrespectful (we did talk about that, though), but feedback has overall been more positive than I expected.

Here’s how the essay opens:

Why is Apple so successful and their products so popular?

The common narrative around this question is some version of “Apple customers are sheep” or “Because people will buy anything with an Apple logo on it,” or “Because people want to be cool, and Apple has a cool brand.” All nice, tidy answers, and all misguided. Because underneath them all is an unspoken but flawed assumption: the assumption that most people are stupid.

It’s an assumption that permeates everything from politics (“most voters are ignorant”) to the arts (“the average person has no taste to speak of”). And it’s somehow come to be a widely accepted narrative about the world’s biggest company. But it’s a narrative that couldn’t be more wrong.

Read the whole thing here at the link below:

Read the essay

Making space for a courtyard

I read this beautiful essay this week, from Cabel Sasser (who is part of a couple of guys who make this beautiful device) about making space for the “courtyard” in the things we do. The courtyard is a metaphor for things that with more aesthetic than utilitarian value. I love the idea that not everything has to be functional—sometimes it’s okay to enjoy something simply because it’s enjoyable. It’s how children play, after all, and that’s something worth carrying with us into adulthood.

But the focus of the article is that building this stuff in is work and takes effort, and yet it’s worth it. Cabel writes:

I think about the time it takes. I think about how you can’t see them from the street, and it’s really only a treat for the people in this complex. I think about how much better they make my life.

He closes with:

Whatever you’re working on right now, whatever it might be, I ask: try to leave a little space for a courtyard.

Read the whole thing at this link.

Killer keanumycins

I’m not making that up. I found out about this from One Foot Tsunami. Apparently some German scientists discovered a new active ingredient from Pseudomonas bacteria that might be useful as a natural pesticide. So they decided to… Well, I’ll let them tell it:

"The lipopeptides kill so efficiently that we named them after Keanu Reeves because he, too, is extremely deadly in his roles," Götze explains with a wink.

It’s perfect.

And I hope your weekend is, too.

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I track my heart rate with my Apple Watch, and last year’s watchOS update happened to come with a heart zone monitoring feature, with alerts when you attain and/or exceed a zone. The aim is to get into and stay within zone 2: 60-70% or so of my maximum heart rate.

The difficulty of deliberate slowness

The surprising thing has been how hard it’s been to slow down and stay slow. I realised quickly that I simply couldn’t run in Zone 2, and needed a different form of exercise. A bit of experimenting at the gym, and I found that I could make it work with stair-stepping machines and with treadmills if I walked at an incline.

That’s when I made the next discovery: although it’s low intensity and didn’t feel effortful, I still found myself sweating far more than when I played badminton, as much as if I were all-out running. I think that was from the steadiness of it: whereas in badminton my heart rate went up more often, it also went down more often when I would stand to serve and such. WIth the zone 2 training, however, there was no stopping and no dropping.

There’s a parable in there, isn’t there? To go faster, we need to slow down, and when we do, it’s surprising how much more difficult that is than simply going all out. It’s like how strength training is so much harder when you really slow down instead of pushing through with the momentum. In those moments, going faster is almost a relief.

Slowing down, it turns out, is a skill, and one that takes time to master.

But in a world where we’re constantly being nudged to hurry, it’s a skill worth learning. In a way, that’s what these Notes are about, isn’t it—I need to slow down to write them, and so do you, to read them.

In that spirit, perhaps consider taking another moment to invite a friend to slow down with you?

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A laborious essay

That was my essay this week: the most difficult thing I’ve written in a while, and definitely the hardest this year. I wanted to give up on it several times, and at one point joked with a friend about it feeling like prolonged labour. She was justly quick to admonish me for making the comparison.

I thought a bit about why it was such a difficult essay to write, and I think it’s just because it felt so personal, but also like something people might get upset about. I suppose that’s the intersection of the most difficult stuff to create: something you personally think, but that might anger others. Sometimes, you wait until you’re sure you can say it as respectfully as possible. Other times you just say it because it needs to be said even if you’re the not most suited to say it.

Anyway, I submitted it to a Medium publication and am waiting for feedback. I’ll of course share when it’s published.

The kindness of strangers

This week, I enjoyed a simple but beautiful read from Janna Barrett about getting free coffee from strangers—in New York, of all places! (And whatever you make of that sentence, I promise you the actual story is even better.)

My favourite line:

I practically skipped down the street, with a huge goofy smile that I was both unable and unwilling to wipe off my face. I didn’t care if I looked silly, smiling to no one. I deserved a moment of uncontrollable happiness upon the fruition of a laborious, menial project — and as the recipient of a lengthy act of kindness from about a hundred strangers I’ll never know anything about.

Check out the whole thing.

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Last year, I learned how to ride. This year, I’m learning how to swim. And last week I played badminton for the first time. And all I can tell you is, I don’t know how kids do it. Because that’s how it’s felt every time: like being a child again, except while looking like an adult, which feels like the worst of both worlds. It’s especially more tricky because each of those things is about learning to move differently: on a bicycle, in water, on a court. (Who asked me, right?)

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And as if that’s not enough, I’m also learning Spanish, which is basically learning how to talk all over again. I’ll be exploring this more in a future essay, but for now, I’ll just say I have a new and deeper appreciation for why people struggle to learn as they get older.

Learning in Spanish is aprender, by the way, which makes me think of “apprehend”, which in turn is a great word for what happens in learning: you grasp something new.

An average essay

This week I wrote about being average, and why that’s not the bad thing we tend to frame it as. I had a couple responses to the effect of, “I agree with the general idea, but the word ‘average’ just feels wrong to me.” One friend even suggested “normal” instead, saying ”average” connoted “not up to par”. But as I pointed out, that was precisely the point I was getting at. Average only feels below par when we’ve assumed “par” is the top. Consider, for instance, that a synonym for “below par” is “below average”—and yet, we somehow see “up to par” as being above average?

Here’s how it began:

It’s funny, isn’t it, how average is somehow a bad word?

You wouldn’t consider it a compliment if someone called a project you worked on or a meal you made average. You certainly wouldn’t take it very kindly to have our work called average, or our lives, and God help you if you dared to say that to a parent about their kids. Why be average when you can be special, right?

But, as Dash says to his mum in The Incredibles, if everyone is special, then no one is.

Read the whole thing here:

This week's essay

More is better—or is it?

I read a great essay this week by journalise and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow. He was writing about Mastodon, the new network people are moving to from Twitter (I’m on there myself, by the way), but it really was a reflection on human nature. He argues that we tend to organise in small groups, but smaller groups are harder to control or make money from. And so those who desire power are always motivated to coalesce us into larger groups. As he puts it, “Happy people, the kind who eat sandwiches together, are boring. They don’t buy much.”

Then he goes on to talk about how the story of the Tower of Babel is for him a lesson in the importance of decentralisation.

"Every five or six minutes, someone in the social sciences publishes a PDF with a title like “Humans 95 Percent Happier in Small Towns, Waving at Neighbors and Eating Sandwiches.” When we gather in groups of more than, say, eight, it’s a disaster. Yet there is something fundamental in our nature that desperately wants to get everyone together in one big room, to “solve it.” Our smarter, richer betters (in Babel times, the king’s name was Nimrod) often preach the idea of a town square, a marketplace of ideas, a centralized hub of discourse and entertainment—and we listen. But when I go back and read Genesis, I hear God saying: “My children, I designed your brains to scale to 150 stable relationships. Anything beyond that is overclocking. You should all try Mastodon.”
— Cory Doctorow, God Did the World a Favor by Destroying Twitter

I think his read of the story rather over-emphasises the decentralisation aspect, but I found it interesting all the same, and there’s something there I want to write about, at least in part as a response to him. (To his credit, Doctorow himself admits he might be misreading it, as he’s an atheist himself.) I do agree, though, that organising in large numbers tends to prove a recipe for human trouble, and there’s something to the idea that we thrive in smaller numbers.

Maybe more isn’t always better.

Funny pineapple

I’ll leave you with the absolute funniest video I’ve seen in ages. Every so often you run into something that’s just too good to not share, and I found this genius. From the music, to the writing, to the sheer humour of it all.

Enjoy.

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It’s not always dramatic (and sadly, we occasionally don’t quite get there), but every so often, you go home on a Friday and come back on a Monday, and it’s like the person you left has been replaced. It’s a beautiful moment when it happens, and it often puts me in mind of Michelangelo’s David: when asked how he had the idea, he said the David was always in the marble and all he did was chip off everything that wasn’t the David.

I believe that’s what we get to do with patients, and I’m lucky to get to be a part of that. It’s not a connection people tend to make, but I really believe healthcare at its best is a very real creative work. Not creative in the sense of trying new things all the time, but in the sense of something is actually being made together with the patient: the possibility of a different kind of future. (I wrote a bit more about that collaborative aspect in a previous essay, Dancing at Work.)

Speaking of creativity…

Cooking with creativity

Creating is core to our humanness, but that very fact makes it fraught with risk. There’s something exhilarating about having made something and being able to, “This is good,” but there can also be a very real sense of vulnerability in the moment of actually creating, or of waiting to see what the reaction of an audience will be.

I should know—I feel it every time I send out an essay or newsletter! And I definitely felt it when I wrote the essay for this week, on the multiple layers of creating, and the risks at each layer.

When I create, I feel both most alive and most at risk.

That’s one half of the creative paradox. You know what I mean, don’t you? And by creation and art, I don’t just mean drawing and painting, writing and music, and whatever other classic arts come to mind. I mean anything that involves making, effort and consideration: from big things like building a business or raising a child to seemingly small things like making a meal or making a presentation — or making love. And writing, certainly. There’s just something about having an idea, bringing it to life and watching it grow, that makes us also feel alive.

If it’s all so wonderful, then, why don’t more people create more often?

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Time after time

This week I’ve been reading, “How to Inhabit Time,” by James KA Smith, and it has this really great line:

Like most people, I frequently feel like I’m short on time, and it’s easy to fall into valuing any moment primarily for its usefulness as a vehicle for the next. But to live like that would be to rush to the end of a long trip only to realise you’ve left behind all the luggage you need there.

Because in the (hopefully) long trip that is our lives, our luggage is being packed (or not) from one moment to the next.

What are you packing?

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I’m reading my second Stephen King book this year—you know I love me some King. This one is called Later, and it’s a story about a boy who sees dead people, but not in a fun way: the ghosts he sees tend to hang around for a while after their death, and gradually fade away over the next couple weeks. That description struck me as a beautiful representation of presence. I don't believe in ghosts myself, but I like the idea of people having such presence, that you feel them even when they’re gone. That’s something we can all relate to, right?

My labelling job

My essay this week was an argument for labelling people, and it seemed to really resonate with folks—I got several comments both on the webpage and on other channels. If you enjoyed it, please go ahead and share it. And if you haven’t seen it yet, here you go:

It’s my job to label people.

That’s not how I like to think about it, but that’s how patients sometimes see the diagnoses doctors give them: like we’ve slapped a sticker on them that says, “Dangerous! Don’t touch!” And I get that. There’s been great progress in the public perception of mental illness, but there’s still a lot of negativity compared to physical health problems. Depression still gets taken less seriously than diabetes. And it’s worse with a diagnosis like schizophrenia, which people sometimes react to like they've been cursed.

Not everyone experiences a diagnosis so negatively, though, even in psychiatry. For some, a diagnosis is liberating…

Continue reading it here:

This week’s essay: Labels

Essay pushback

One commenter, after being kind enough to commend my points, remained unconvinced by them:

…[I]n my opinion, labels do more damage than good. When you label a person, that’s all you see – the disease and not the person. Labels work more to satisfy the person doing the labelling, not the person being labelled. Mental health is subjective, but labels allow the professionals to put a bunch of people in one single box because they have certain presentations in common.

This is a common but (I believe) misguided view, but its existence is why I wrote the essay. I think it’s attractive because it sounds admirable: let’s treat people individually, rather than as groups. But it starts to fall apart the minute you think hard about it.

Here’s some of my reply:

Yet, we must name a disease if there is to be any hope of providing good care for the person. Is there a risk that in naming the disease, the person will be seen as nothing more? Certainly. But there’s also the risk, in not naming the disease, that we will be unable to even know what to do about it. Similarly, professionals using labels to group common presentations together is a feature rather than a bug. Imagine if every time a person went to hospital, the doctors had to start from scratch understanding how to help them, without being able to bring their experience to bear? That would be a worse state of things than healthcare pre-modern medicine. So again, the problem isn’t that categorising, it’s if we were so bound to our categories that we missed the differences. Indeed, by allowing us to group similar things, labels in fact help us appreciate differences, wouldn’t you agree?

I want to expand a bit more on that last point: we recognise differences better when we can identify similarities.

Like attracts like—and spotlights uniqueness

Our ability to recognise similarities (which I wrote about here) is the foundation of all our learning—without it, we’d be unable to transfer anything from the experience of others to ours.

In the same way, recognising similar health issues allows professionals to transfer experience from one person to another. It’s the whole foundation, not just of healthcare, but of every human endeavour. And even cooler, when we know for instance that a person has got schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, it’s easier to focus on the ways they’re unique, or even unusual. Labels help make it easier to set the generalities aside and truly see the individual’s unique personal, socioeconomic or other circumstances

We wouldn’t be able to do that if we weren’t even sure what we were dealing with in the first place. Just ask the people themselves, or their loved ones, who before they know their problems have a name, feel adrift on the waves of their own experience.

And to reiterate: I’m not for one second disputing the fact that labels are misused. It’s just too easy to see the problems of misuse while overlooking bigger problems we can create by dismissing entirely. It’s like people who focus on side effects of measles vaccines when the effects of measles itself—which I have personally seen—are far, far severe (including potentially lethal) and way more likely.

I find that a lot of what I think about are ideas like these: ones that are attractive, but that seem to me misguided. It reminds me again of the quote from Henry Louis Mencken that I shared in my Note before last (Note 71):

Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.

Reality is complex and not as neat as we’d like, and labels help us manage it. We just need to remember that labels aren’t reality, any more than maps are the road itself.

Everyday magic (quote)

Speaking of the complexity of reality, I’ll leave you as I began, with the King himself. Enjoy this quote from his last book I read, about a boy who finds a path into another, magical world. I loved this passage where he reflects on how the people of that world took its magic for granted:

“What about the magic, you ask? The sundial? The night soldiers? The buildings that sometimes seemed to change their shapes? They took it for granted. If you find that strange, imagine a time-traveler from 1910 being transported to 2010 and finding a world where people flew through the sky in giant metal birds and rode in cars capable of going ninety miles an hour. A world where everyone went bopping around with powerful computers in their pockets. Or imagine a guy who’s only seen a few silent black-and-white films plunked down in the front row of an IMAX theater and watching Avatar in 3-D. You get used to the amazing, that’s all. Mermaids and IMAX, giants and cell phones. If it’s in your world, you go with it. It’s wonderful, right?”
—Stephen King, Fairy Tale

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Apparently, people are more likely to trust authority figures when they feel able to believe three things are present:

• perceived empathy

• perceived lack of conflicts of interest

• perceived competence

He only mentioned them and moved on, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it since, especially given that winning trust is a big part of my day job. (I wrote about that here.)

It’s probably only incidental that he mentioned competence last, but I think that’s appropriate. People really do find it easier to believe you’re competent when the other two things are in place, and where they think there are conflicts of interest or no empathy, they are prone to distrust any competence you might claim.

After all, it doesn’t really matter how good at stuff someone is if they’re out to harm you. In fact, that only makes you more suspicious, doesn’t it? Or put differently, a good God who isn’t powerful is simply irrelevant, but a powerful God who isn’t good? That would be terrifying.

The lesson here? To win people’s trust, it’s probably worth going in that order: show that you have their interests in view, and then be clear as to your having no other competing interests in view. Then they might be interested in knowing how much you know and can do.

Soul wounds

The thing about trust, of course, is that while it can take a while to build, we can lose it rapidly. And then it’s even harder to regain. And a quote from one of my favourite authors reminded me of why it’s harder:

Once the soul grows accustomed to the wound, it’s much harder to fix.

— Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

The quote brings to mind a tree that’s misshapen by being forced to grow around an obstacle. Or a broken leg that’s been poorly set, so it’s healed but with a permanent deformity that you now can’t simply reset.

That’s what happens when trust is lost.

Oh, I could ride 300 miles…*

(Just in case you don’t get that reference.)

I’ve now ridden 300 miles (that’s over 480 km) on my e-bike.

And over the course of that time, I’ve come to realise something I never really thought about until I started cycling. See, most of those miles are from just going around town to places I needed to be: work, friends, and so on. Only twice, so far, have I gone riding just to ride.

We tend to think of exercise as something you go out of your way to do: whether that’s going to the gym, running or whatever else. But physical activity throughout history was just built into everyday life. Of course, everyday life has since changed from what it’s historically been, but cycling helps me get some of that back. When I ride to work and back, I’m getting physical activity as merely part of everyday life.

I’m grateful I get to do that.

What have you been grateful for recently?

It really does feel good to be back. And my hearty thanks to everyone who sent very kind words in reply to last week’s note. I know it sounds cliché, but you really are why I write. I mean, sure, there’s a sense in which I write for myself, but I won’t pretend for a second that I also don’t do it for you to hopefully enjoy. It’s a bit like making a delicious meal: you get to enjoy it, but there’s something extra special about sharing and watching someone else enjoy it too.

I don’t take your enjoyment for granted, and I thank you for letting me know you did.

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Wrestling in public

Before I went on my hiatus, I’d been trying to be more personal in my writing. Before 2020 I’d always maintained some distance in what I write, but I felt like I was holding back, and I wanted to explore being more vulnerable and honest. And although it was challenging, I found it rewarding, and from your response, you seem to have too.

The challenge with being personal, of course, is that as I mentioned earlier, I’m not writing for myself—that’s what my journal is for. I’m writing for you, which means I’m always thinking about what you’re getting out of this—and quite frankly, I still get amazed that you get anything out of it! So by personal, I really mean, things personal to me that I think you and others like you would find useful as well.

As you know if you’ve been reading me for any length of time, my Christian faith is core to how I think about and look at things. Practising faith can be rather like parenting: it looks cute to onlookers, is incredibly challenging in reality, and can be surprisingly rewarding. I’ve already written about both the challenging and rewarding aspects of faith, and been grateful for your thoughtful feedback, including from you who share a different faith, or none.

But something else I think about a lot is Apple—anyone who knows me knows how I go on about the company and really see them as unique. To some, that makes me what is popularly known as an “Apple fanboy”, or “sheep”—labels I don’t care for but also don’t care to disabuse anyone of. (I can just see some of my friends rolling their eyes at this—don’t hate!) What I do care about is, again, how my writing about it would serve you, irrespective of your view of Apple.

And that’s where stories come in. We human beings are storytellers, and to that end, Being Human is about the stories we tell. And while Apple and Christianity are my personal interests, they also represent two of the most wildly successful stories ever. That makes them worthy of exploring, which is what I want to do in coming essays.

Speaking of essays…

More confident than you think (essay)

You know how you’re all fluttery inside and somehow people tell you they see you as confident, and wished they had even half the nerve you show? It always feels weird when that happens, doesn’t it? Worse, they don’t even believe you when you’re honestly telling them how you feel. Well, my essay this week is about that experience, and whether we need to rethink how we understand what it means to be confident. (A friend pointed out that it was a fitting topic, given I’ve not written anything for a year!)

Here’s the opening:

Many people who know me think of me as confident.

I can see why: it’s in how I talk, the way I socialise, maybe even what I wear. Underneath all that, though, those who get a bit closer quickly learn that I’m actually wracked with self-doubt and uncertainty and can tend to a very negative self-talk. But most people don’t see that, or even want to believe it if I point it out.

I get it. Like many people, I used to think of celebrities and other visibly successful people as undoubtedly confident. I mean, they have to be, right? Or how else do they engage their audience and the wider public as often and as assuredly as they do? Sure, they talk in interviews about their struggles with confidence, but I used to interpret that as them just trying to be relatable to the rest of us normies.

Over the last few years, I’ve been seeing it all differently, and that all began with making a shift.

Continue reading at the link below:

This week’s essay

What I’m reading…

I’m currently reading (and greatly enjoying) Fairy Tale by Stephen King and came across a great quote from a character who attributes it to Henry Louis Mencken:

“There is a solution to every problem: simple, quick, and wrong.”

(By the way I looked up the actual quote on the brilliant Quote Investigator:“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” As is often the case with these things, I rather prefer King’s misquote.)

That just about sums up something that’s been more evident the older I get: in the face of the complexity of reality, we’re always tempted by simple solutions, and easy answers. It’s why conspiracy theorists and conmen will always be in business: it’s easier to sell a simple lie than offer a complex truth. But I think there’s an opportunity in there too, which is to think about how we can offer right answers that are simple, if not quick.

Simplifying reality without losing its essence, is however incredibly hard to do, which is why it’s so very rarely done. But that’s precisely what I want to try to do. Christianity and Apple sound like a great place to begin, don’t you think?

(No, really, what do you think? Let me know in the comments!)

Yours in story,

Doc Ayomide

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I’m back.

I sent out the last Notes on Being Human on Christmas Eve 2021. It was Note #69 and I titled it, “The last newsletter”. The subtitle was “for 2021—fear not! More inside,” and I went on to explain that I was only going away for two weeks, to be back the second week of January.

Notes On Being Human

Note #69: The last newsletter…

What’s up? This will be my last newsletter for this year. I’ll be taking a two week break over the holidays, and second week of January, I’ll be back—and hopefully better. And more importantly, I’ll be regular again. In the meantime, I’ve been recovering from an unexpected COVID infection right around Christmas. It was surprising because I’d somehow never …

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5 years ago · 1 like · Doc Ayomide

It turned out those two weeks turned into one year.

I’m really sorry about that. I’m excited to be back, and I’m grateful again to those of you who reached out during my unannounced hiatus.

As you can imagine from my going incommunicado, it wasn’t my best year. But actually—it kind of was, in other ways. Y’know what I mean? Sometimes your world falls apart and in the middle of the ruins you find new life pushing through, in the stubborn way life tends to. I won’t go now into the details of the ruins (although I’m doing a good bit better), but I am quite happy to talk about some of the new life that blossomed like. To quote Tupac Shakur:

Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?

In my case there were 3 roses.

I turned the big four-oh

On one hand, age is only a number, right? But then 40 also feels to me like half-time. There’s every reason I might change my view on this with time, of course, but I really do feel like if I’m lucky to make 80 years, anything after that is practically injury time. So me turning 40 felt like a moment to really re-evaluate life, but also take a few chances, because why not?

So in 2022 I did a 35-mile walk for charity just because, abseiled down a 30-foot building, and even tried go-karting for the first time, and even got back into regular running after abandoning it for almost two years. In the last month of the year, I started journalling again, and in the final week I took a plunge into learning the basics of Spanish. These weren’t big things as such, but each was important to me. But the biggest thing I took a chance with this year deserves its own category…

I learned how to cycle

Don’t laugh. Seriously, before 2022 I didn’t know how to ride a bike. It felt like after I missed learning in childhood, the moment for that had passed. But after moving a few years ago to the UK and seeing more and more people ride, I started to think about it again. A couple years ago a friend took a couple hours to try to teach me. It was in vain and I became even more convinced I was past learning how to balance on two wheels.

But then in 2022 I met a friend in her thirties who had only just learned—by herself. That inspired me anew, so I bought a cheap bike, got an hour’s lesson in how to push off from stationary and…that was it. I figured the rest out on my own, trusting that my body in fact had the ability to figure out how to manage the moment-to-moment balancing act required to ride a bike. I eventually bought this beauty (because of course I wanted an e-bike), and ended up cycling almost 200 miles in under two months.

I dug deeper into relationships.

I stopped going to church during the pandemic, switching with the rest of the worshiping world to online meetings, but when things started to open up in 2021, I was glad to be back in physical church. But it was last year that saw me finding community and friendship there, at a time when I needed that the most.

I also connected more richly with some longstanding friends, got a lot closer to a recent one and made some delightful new ones. I couldn’t have got through the year as well as I did without these precious people who were incredibly generous with their time and their hearts. There’s some research indicating that men tend to make and keep few friends as they get older, so renewing old friendships and finding new ones at 40 felt truly significant.

So those were the three flowers I found blooming in what started off looking like a ruin of a year: time, learning, relationships. And going into a new year…

Coming up…

I certainly find myself wanting to reach even deeper into those three things: to use my time even more richly, to learn even more keenly and to love even more fully. And a big part of that includes getting back to writing and publishing regularly—journalling, essays and this newsletter. Speaking of writing, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that: I want to write a lot more about the way stories shape us as humans—the stories we tell, the stories we believe, the stories we live.

But more on that in my next newsletter—this one is long enough as it is.

Your turn

What did 2022 mean to you, and what are you looking forward to in 2023? Share in the comments, would you?

Yours again,

Doc Ayomide