Yonda is a Yoruba word that means to allow, to let go, to free. Strangely enough, I’ve been thinking about it alongside another word I really like: sonder. Sonder is the realisation that every person you encounter is living a life as vivid and complicated as your own. That the stranger sitting beside you on a plane has a whole life you know nothing about. That the person who annoyed you at the supermarket has fears, desires, relationships, memories and probably an entire backstory that has nothing to do with you.

I’ve been thinking about this because of all the conversations that have come up recently following Peter Okoye’s videos about his family and his relationship with Lola Omotayo. Tbh, I didn’t watch all of the videos. I saw a few clips here and there, enough to understand the general conversation around his family not approving of his then-girlfriend now wife.

Then, as these things tend to do, the conversation expanded beyond Peter, Paul, Jude, his family and Lola.

People started talking about their own ideas about marriage, children and parental authority. I saw someone say, essentially, that when she has children, she will decide who they will marry. I immediately thought “ah, here we go again”

There is something fascinating about the way we sometimes think about other people’s lives.

We want to be the main character. Especially in the lives of the people we love. We want to make the decisions. We want to decide what is best. We want our advice to be followed. We want our children to choose the careers we think are sensible, marry the people we approve of, live in the places we would choose and generally make decisions that validate our idea of what a good life looks like.

On the surface, I can understand why. Parents, especially, don’t wake up one morning and decide, “Today, I will control my child’s life.” At least I hope not. A lot of it comes from love, from fear, from experience, from thinking, ‘I’ve lived longer than you. I’ve seen things you haven’t seen. I know what can go wrong. Let me save you from making the mistakes I made.’

Unfortunately, these factors sometimes make people mistaken ownership as love.

This is where I think yonda becomes important: to allow someone you love to be. To recognise that they are a person separate from you. To let them make choices and consequently their mistakes. To let them have experiences you would never choose for yourself. To let them become whoever they’re becoming. Perhaps most importantly, to accept that you are not always going to understand their choices.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate in this regard. My mum has always championed allowing us to yonda, especially when it comes to our education and career choices. I think part of the reason they have been able to do that is because her parents allowed her to yonda too.

There is something beautiful about that kind of inheritance.The inheritance of agency. The understanding that your child is not an extension of you. They came through you but they are not you and that no matter how much you want to shape them, some things are not as malleable. They have their own life to live.

Now, I think this is where sonder comes in. Sometimes we don’t allow people because we don’t actually see them as fully separate people.

We see them in relation to ourselves: my child, my friend, my partner, my sibling etc.

I have noticed that for most people, once someone becomes my person, we can unconsciously start believing that their choices should make sense to us. I have always wondered why? Why must another person’s life make sense according to the framework I have built for my own?

Sonder asks us to remember that there is an entire person in there. A person with their own context: their own fears, desires, history, information, version of events, things they are trying to figure out.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. There was this thing we used to do in secondary school where, if someone stood with their knees bent, another person would use their knees to push theirs apart. I don’t even know how to explain it properly but it was one of those silly things that people did for fun.

There was a girl who had done it to me countless times. Nothing had ever happened. So one day, she did it again.

Except this time, I went down in pain. I don’t remember exactly what happened to my knee at that moment. I just remember being in so much pain that I ended up in the school clinic. We were going home that afternoon, so I eventually went home but by the next day, my knee had swollen.

Before I left school, the school doctor told my mum that I need to see an orthopedic doctor. After consultations, X-rays, an MRI and all the other things that come with trying to figure out what is wrong with your body, we found out that I had a tumour growing in the bone in my knee.

That is a story for another day.

When I went back to school and people asked what happened, I remember explaining that I wasn’t angry with her.

Because I knew she didn’t do it intentionally. She wasn’t thinking, ‘How am I going to hurt Ope today?’ She and others had done the exact same thing countless times, and nothing had happened. As far as she knew, it was just a silly thing we did.

It would have been so easy to reduce the entire thing to: she hurt me (technically, she did but that’s not the same as she intended to hurt me).

In fact, I am incredibly grateful that it happened when it did. Because if that hadn’t happened, I might have gone on for much longer without knowing what was happening in my knee and because the tumour was growing in the bone, I could have eventually fractured it.

Then we’d be talking about a completely different timeline: The fracture - waiting for it to heal - surgery + biopsy - recovery and crutches for much longer.

Instead, I caught something that I didn’t even know was there. So the person who, technically, caused the injury was also inadvertently part of the reason I found the thing that could have caused a much more serious injury later.

This always makes me think about that incident whenever I think about how quickly we assign intention to people’s actions. The truth is she didn’t and couldn’t have known. Neither did I. She was just living her life and doing something she had done before.

That experience has probably contributed to the way I approach people now.

I don’t automatically assume that people are out to get me. I don’t automatically assume that every hurtful thing someone does was calculated.

As hard as it can be, I try to look at things case by case.

What matters is intent, context, and history. If you deliberately hurt me knowing something matters to me, that’s one thing. If you transfer anger from someone else onto me intentionally, that’s another but if I’m collateral damage in your decision to meet your own needs? That’s different still.

More importantly, people are simply people. They make a decision based on what they know or think they know, what they’re feeling, what they want or what they think is harmless. As a result, sometimes that decision affects us.

That doesn’t automatically mean it was about us. That’s sonder too.

Understanding that there is an entire person on the other side of an action, with their own context that we may never fully know.

Sometimes, understanding that is what allows us to yonda. For example, when someone does something that hurts me, my first instinct isn’t always to assume that they did it to me.

Sometimes they did. People can be intentional. People can be selfish. People can be cruel. Also, on the same side of the coin, maybe, they weren’t thinking about me at all. Sometimes someone makes a decision based on their own needs, fears, limitations or circumstances and I happen to be affected by it.

There is a difference.

When I automatically assume that everything someone does is about me, I put myself at the centre of their story and assume myself to be the main character in their life. They hurt me. They ignored me. They chose this because of me. They did this intentionally to me.

Suddenly, I might live most of my life in a perpetual state of victimhood because every action in someone else’s life becomes evidence of something being done to me.

Sonder offers another possibility. Maybe they were just living, making the best decision they could with what they knew. Maybe they were wrong or selfish. Or maybe they considered me and chose themselves anyway. Tbh, that last one is hard. A lot of the time, we often confuse loving someone with having a claim over their decisions but you can love someone deeply and still understand that their life belongs to them.

Your child can love you and choose a partner you don’t like. Your friend can love you and make a decision you disagree with. Your sibling can hear all your advice and do the exact opposite. Someone can appreciate everything you’ve done for them and still choose a life you wouldn’t choose for them.

Of course, yonda is on a case by case basis. Let’s not conflate yonda as not caring. I am not saying that you should watch someone spoil their lives and not intervene or give advice. I think that yonda can be the deepest forms of love. It is saying: I trust you to live your life. I trust you to make your choices. I trust that you will figure some things out. Even when I don’t agree with you, I recognise that this is your life.

This is the part of growing up that we don’t talk about enough. Not just learning how to make our own choices but learning how to let other people make theirs.

None of those things make us less important.

There is a strange kind of freedom that comes from understanding this. Because once you stop believing that everyone else’s choices are about you, you become less offended by other people living their lives.

You can love people without entering the manager or dictator role. You can advise without controlling. You can disagree without making their decision a personal betrayal.You can watch someone make a choice you wouldn’t make and say: Well, that’s their life and then let them live it.

That’s the correlation between sonder and yonda. The ability to see someone fully enough to realise that their life is theirs and then love them enough to let them have it.

When I was younger, I was mildly obsessed with four-leaf clovers.

They showed up in animations, cartoons, books and jewellery. Every now and then someone would mention that finding one meant you were lucky. I remember thinking how wonderful that must feel, to stumble across something so rare that the universe had apparently decided to hand you a tiny gift.

I wanted one desperately.

I even entertained the idea of looking for one until reality gently reminded me that I grew up in Lagos. Where exactly was I supposed to find a meadow? The closest thing I had were football fields and, as it turns out, those are very different ecosystems. So my four-leaf clover hunt ended before it ever really began.

Looking back, I think that was my first definition of luck.

Luck was the thing you found. It was rare, unexpected and spectacular.

You either found the four-leaf clover or you didn’t. Simple. Children are wonderfully uncomplicated like that. Adults, on the other hand, have a habit of making everything far more interesting.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I’d started questioning what actually counts as luck. For most of my life, I’d only recognised one version of it: the visible, onwards-and-upwards kind. The scholarship. The dream job. The opportunity that changes everything overnight. The right person appearing at exactly the right moment.

I ended that piece by saying I wanted to sit with the question a little longer because I had a feeling I’d overlooked entire ways that luck shows up in our lives.

Catch up on the previous article below:

As it turns out, every rabbit hole I’ve ever fallen into has taught me the same lesson: answering one question usually leaves me with three more. The more I thought about luck, the more I realised it wasn’t that luck was bigger than I’d imagined. I’d been looking at it from the wrong angle.

I’ve sat with it and come to realise that luck has never been one thing. The more I looked, the more I realised luck doesn’t just arrive in one dramatic moment. It moves through our lives in different ways. Maybe luck has always been multilingual. I’d just been fluent in only one of its languages.

Sometimes you’re simply born into it.

Not necessarily into money, although that certainly counts. Sometimes you’re born into a family that makes failure feel safe instead of shameful. Or into parents who love each other well enough that home feels peaceful. Or into extraordinary health. Or into a country with opportunities someone else can only dream about.

You didn’t earn any of those things. They arrived before you did. Some shape the entire direction of your life without ever looking extraordinary.

Sometimes luck is something another person creates for you.

Sometimes luck is an outstretched hand:

• A teacher who notices something in you before you do.

• A manager who decides to mentor you instead of merely supervise you.

• A sibling who becomes your safest place in the world.

• A friend who introduces you to someone who changes the direction of your life.

• A parent who gives you permission to become yourself.

None of those people had to make those choices. Yet one decision from them can permanently alter someone else’s life.

Sometimes luck is something you slowly build.

From the outside, it rarely looks that way. Someone finally lands the job everybody wants or gets into the prestigious company everyone dreams about.

People smile and say, “You’re so lucky.”

What nobody sees are the hundreds of applications that came before it. The skills they kept building when nobody was watching. The evenings spent learning something new. The conversations they started. The risks they took. The moments they kept showing up after rejection made staying home feel much easier.

Eventually an opportunity appears and people call them lucky. Maybe they are but the truth is they’ve also spent years making it easier for luck to find them.

It reminds me of a farmer. When harvest season arrives and one field produces abundantly, it’s easy to look at the overflowing baskets and call it luck. What you don’t see are the months of preparing the soil, planting the seeds, watering consistently, pulling weeds, protecting the crops and showing up every single day before there was anything visible to harvest.

The harvest may arrive all at once but the conditions for it didn’t.

Maybe that’s what building luck really is. Preparing the ground so thoroughly that when opportunity finally arrives, it has somewhere to land.

Then there’s another kind of luck. The kind that’s simply... you.

Some gifts seem so ordinary that we mistake them for normal. The brain that instinctively understands language. The person who naturally remembers faces. The person who naturally puts other people at ease. The person who can explain complicated things simply. The child who picks up music almost immediately. The person whose instinct is to notice patterns everyone else misses.

We assume everyone finds them just as easy because we’ve never known what it’s like to live without them.

Then another pattern emerged

Once I noticed these different ways luck moves through our lives, something else became impossible to ignore. They don’t stay in separate lanes. They interact and compound. One kind of luck quietly changes the probability of another.

One grows up in a home where books are everywhere. Reading isn’t treated as homework; it’s simply part of everyday life. Questions about words are welcomed. Curiosity is encouraged instead of hurried along. Years later, people describe them as “naturally articulate.” They’re looking at the final domino and not the thousands of tiny moments that pushed it there.

Look at another child whose parents don’t simply tell them what to think. They ask what they think. They ask for their opinions. Their parents don’t immediately jump in with the answer or finish every sentence for them. They give them space to think, explain themselves and sometimes arrive at their own conclusions. They encourage other adults to genuinely speak with them too, not just speak at them. They grow up learning that their voice matters. They become comfortable expressing themselves, comfortable asking questions, comfortable talking to adults without shrinking into themselves. Years later, they walk into an interview and seem effortlessly confident. People point to the interview and not the childhood conversations that had countless rehearsals.

Or take a third child. Growing up somewhere that never punished curiosity. “Why?” wasn’t seen as talking back. It was treated as the beginning of a conversation. Years later, people describe you as naturally curious. They think it’s your personality. They don’t see the environment that taught you questions were worth asking. When I was younger, I used to pester my mum about the meanings of certain words and she would tell me to find it in a dictionary by myself. That one choice not to just give me answers sent me down rabbit holes. Words led to etymology, etymology led to history, history led to mythology and about fifteen other paths I hadn’t intended to follow. Maybe she didn’t realize she was teaching me how to be curious but that seemingly small choice probably shaped more about how I approach curiosity than any formal education did.

None of these examples guarantee an outcome. Life is far too messy for that but they change the odds. They make certain futures more likely than they otherwise would have been. By the time everyone notices the last domino, they’re often looking at years of invisible advantages, choices, relationships and circumstances quietly working together.

Of course, none of us gets every version of luck. Some people begin life carrying extraordinary advantages; others begin by carrying extraordinary burdens. Most of us inherit some mixture of both.

That’s the part I completely missed as a child.

I used to think luck was one spectacular event. Now I think it’s much closer to a web. Some strands you’re born onto. Some are woven by other people. Some you spend years weaving yourself. Some have always been part of who you are.

Most of us don’t just have one. We carry several at once. Maybe that’s why luck is so easy to misunderstand. We’re usually staring at the brightest thread while overlooking the hundreds holding everything else together.

As an adult, now I know that maybe finding four-leaf clovers was never about searching harder. Maybe it was about finally seeing that luck has been growing everywhere: in the people who chose to nurture me, in the quiet gifts I was born with, in the years I kept showing up, in the web of invisible advantages I’m only now learning to recognize.

Maybe I was never looking for the wrong thing. I was just looking in the wrong places.

Although, if I’m honest, I think I’ve stumbled into yet another rabbit hole. It turns out that recognising the many forms of luck is one thing. Learning to recognise your own might be something else entirely.

See you in two weeks 💜

I really hope you’re doing well? My country has been in a state of shambles and affected my ability to write these weeks. I have been angry and sad and so many other emotions coursing through my veins.

One of my favorite quotes comes from a Trevor Noah interview: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

I loved it immediately. It felt simple and profound (like all life-changing quotes). But lately, I’ve been thinking about it differently. What if life isn’t about choosing speed or distance? What if the best-kept secret is about recognizing which race you’re running and knowing when to switch?

Gain some speed alone

When I first started writing (shoutout to Medium), I would send every single draft to some of my friends. If I could stop people on the road and ask them or put the piece on a billboard and include my phone number to ask for feedback, I would have (obvs not because that’s dangerous 😭)

At that stage, I was fresh out of university but pre-NYSC which meant plenty of time on my hands. For me, it meant I could hone my writing skills.

Here’s the thing though, I was a little insecure and definitely inexperienced. My writing was like a newborn - something fragile and precious I constantly fussed over and got anxious about every tiny thing. When someone took a few days to respond, I convinced myself the writing was so bad that they didn’t know how to tell me gently.

It was never true. They were just busy but my mind always defaulted to the worst.

Even after they got back to me, some of those pieces never made it out of my drafts and I realized it was detrimental to my progress. I stopped asking and started writing alone; just me, my thoughts and a laptop at 2:31am (inspiration always strikes at the oddest time). No more asking for validation by sending drafts. I would just write; sometimes deranged, sometimes half-asleep towards the end, sometimes emotional, never knowing the end but always so happy to do the thing I loved the most.

Looking back, I needed that sprint.

I found my voice in that silence. I learned to trust my instincts. I started this Substack and hit publish without asking permission. That solo period taught me I could do this, that I didn’t need constant approval to create.

The sprint worked: I got fast and I got confident.

Go the distance with others

Then everything broke.

Slowly, I started feeling the limits of running alone.

The one thing people don’t tell you about running alone is that you eventually hit a wall. Maybe you get tired or you realize that even though you’re moving fast, you’re no longer sure where you’re going.

Recently, I’ve been feeling it more deeply. Maybe because I started writing fiction again and that’s a whole other beast. With my pieces here, I can pull from real life but with fiction, I’m creating worlds that don’t exist.

Writing can be a solitary journey. I have friends who read my work, friends who write too but life happens. People get busy, the economy is shitty, there’s always one bad news after the other and to be honest, people are sad and angry and have so many other emotions. A Jenga of emotions from living in a country that takes so much away from you.

I don’t have many people to share my drafts with, to act as a sounding board. People who understand the weird joy when a sentence finally clicks or the frustration of your brain moving 200 miles per hour one day, writing so furiously you’re afraid you’ll damage your keyboard, and other days, your brain becomes so blank you doubt you’ve ever written a sentence before.

Now, I miss having people to celebrate small wins with, to commiserate with when the words won’t come.I proved to myself I can write alone. But now I’m wondering: what could I create if I wasn’t always alone?

You know that feeling when you’ve had a terrible day and the clouds of despair descends and everything feels heavy, and then you talk to a friend and suddenly it feels like the sun is peeking through the clouds? Or when you have an idea and your people don’t just validate it; they pour resources into it, amplify it, help you take it further than you ever could alone?

I have always been in awe of designers. Like writers, they create alone but they have built amazing communities.

Lately, I have been craving that kind of community for writers. Not the ghost-town WhatsApp groups where you talk to yourself for months because no one responds but something real and actually valuable. I know that some distances are better with company; having people alongside you, cheering for you, propping you up when you get tired, running their own race next to yours. Knowing that you can do the same for them.

I’m foggy about the details on what that can look like but maybe I’ll do it one day and go the distance with other writers. I know I need this and maybe other writers do too but I’m not ready to build it yet - life is too much right now but when I am, I’ll remember this moment and I hope other writers will be ready to run together.

I hope this month is kind to you and the remaining half of the year is filled with love and happiness 💜

I have been thinking a lot about fishes: size, colors, homes. I have been sitting with these questions: does the biggest fish born in a tank know about the ocean? Does it know about the blue whale? Does the blue whale know about the true monstrosity of its size?

The biggest fish in the tank

There is a particular confidence that comes from being the biggest fish in the tank.

I knew it well.

In university, I was a big fish in a small tank. I collected achievements without trying too hard. I got it all: the awards, recognition, the subtle nods that said I was doing great and the not-so-subtle praise that confirmed I was. When you’re winning like that, it’s easy to believe you’re exceptional. And I was in that specific tank, at that specific time. I allowed myself to feel big there. To take up space. To believe in my competence. And I think that mattered. It taught me that excellence wasn’t accidental, that I could commit to something, do it well and see results of my hard work.

But even then, I never confused the tank for the world.

I was always aware of the glass.

I knew I was in school at the same time as tens if not hundreds of thousands of students. We were all moving through the same system, with the same timelines, inching toward the same inevitable release into the real world or the workforce or whatever you want to call it. Being exceptional in that environment didn’t mean I was singular; it meant I was excellent within a contained space.

That awareness kept me grounded.

There’s nothing wrong with being the biggest fish in the tank. In fact, I think it’s important to let yourself be big where you are. To acknowledge your wins. To enjoy mastery when it finds you early. Confidence has to come from somewhere and sometimes it comes from realizing that, yes, you are good at this. It should feel good. You worked for it.

But the danger is forgetting the tank is a tank.

Tanks have limits: clear walls, finite space and a ceiling you can see if you look up. Everyone sees you because there’s nowhere else to look. You can rule the tank and still be completely unaware there is an ocean - one you can’t even imagine from inside the glass and that keeps you unprepared for the sheer vastness of the ocean.

And I think I always knew that.

Being a “big fish” didn’t make me arrogant; it made me on high alert. It reminded me that environments shape perception. That comfort can quietly turn into complacency if you’re not careful.

So even while I was winning, a part of me was already thinking ahead. I knew there were other tanks. That there was an ocean.

And if I was ever going to survive there, I couldn’t cling too tightly to the idea of being a big fish and stay stuck there.

The blue whale in the ocean

The ocean is different.

No one announces your arrival. There’s no neat comparison chart that shows you exactly where you stand. You enter alongside thousands of others, all swimming in different directions, all carrying their own histories of being “the biggest” somewhere else.

Here, size means something else. It means taking the tank and multiplying it by millions.

The blue whale doesn’t dominate the ocean by being the loudest or the fastest. It doesn’t rush or perform. It simply exists at scale - massive and undeniable.

That’s what I’m chasing now: a quiet commitment to excellence that expands over time because it understands depth takes patience.

Owning your ocean

Owning the ocean isn’t about conquering it. It’s about learning how to move through it with intention. Building capacity. Honing craft. Becoming so grounded in what you do that you meld into one.

The fish in the tank waits to be fed. The blue whale hunts for itself.

The biggest fish in the tank still competes with the other fish in its confined space. The blue whale barely notices the small fish, it’s swimming at a different depth.

The biggest fish measures success by the tank’s standards. The blue whale defines its own path.

It’s made me understand a few universal truths:

• Excellence in a controlled environment (school) is different from excellence in chaos (work/life)

• You have to redefine what “winning” means when there’s no clear finish line

• The skills that made you the biggest fish (following rules, excelling at tests) might not be the skills that make you a blue whale (creating your own path, defining your own metrics)

I can acknowledge that I was big then without pretending I am finished now. I can honor my past achievements without letting them define the limits of my future. I can feel small in the vastness without shrinking myself.

For me, owning my ocean looks like consistently being creative : writing this Substack, publishing fiction and exploring other forms of storytelling. It’s not about being the best writer in Nigeria or getting the most subscribers. It’s about rebuilding trust in myself and improving 1% every day. It’s ultimately about building something that compounds over time rather than chasing validation.

I’m not saying don’t celebrate being the biggest fish when you are one. Those achievements matter. They build confidence. They teach you that you can win. But don’t let the tank convince you it’s the whole world. Because somewhere out there is an ocean. And you were built for it.

I want to be the kind of person who remembers both. Who lets herself be big where she is but never stops preparing for the ocean. Who doesn’t cling to applause but builds something deep enough to last.

I’m terrible at documenting my own life.

When I go out with friends, I’m the last person to pull out my phone for photos. When I’m alone, I never remember to take any pictures. I have entire experiences that exist only in my memory - no pictures, no videos, no writings, just the fast-fading imprint of what happened. Which is not ideal because memories are notoriously unreliable.

I have come to rely very heavily on my senses to bring up memories. I smell something and suddenly I’m taking a walk down memory lane. I hear a song and I’m on the surgery table, feeling that old fear. When I hear Bobo by Olamide, I am at my prom, feeling joy, apprehension and mild fear of the future all over again. Senses are viscerally terrifying - they’re hazy but with just enough details, an annoying almost-remembering state where you can’t quite grasp the full picture.

The irony is that I understand exactly why documentation matters but I struggle to do that.

What gets lost to memory

When I first started writing, I wrote about the loss of oriki (poetic praise songs in Yoruba culture) on Medium. My grandfather died and with him went most of our family’s oriki. Only one uncle knew it fully and when he died too, that knowledge disappeared.

It felt like a candle that had been completely burnt out. You can never burn that same candle again. We might never get the oriki anymore.

Recently, my mom was trying to trace our family genealogy and struggled because there were no documents. No records. Just stories and uncertain timelines. I watched her frustration and thought about how much easier it would be if someone (anyone really) had just written things down.

And yet, on some level I understand it. We are an oral culture. We pass things down with words from songs to folklore, our ways of documenting are deeply personal. There’s something primally beautiful about sitting at your grandfather’s feet and hearing stories of his youth as though he kept the memories specially for you.

But there’s a more devastating feeling. When the gatekeeper of that knowledge passes on without leaving the knowledge. That gate is forever locked. And no key can open it. Or at least open it the way it’s supposed to.

Funny enough, I am a serial documentarian at work. However, my personal life doesn’t get the same care. My experiences simply vanish into the ether.

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What gets found in documenting

This year, I’m committed to documenting more. Not for social media but for my own digital archive. Because I’ve realized digital documentation can be just as visceral as memory. I see a picture or video from an event and I’m transported back to the event, feeling everything I felt that day.

So my goal is to document for preservation. I realize I can document without sharing with the world. Just for my digital archive. I’m doing it for me. But also for whoever comes after; the version of my mom in the next generation who wants to know our story and doesn’t have to piece it together from fragments.

My plan: if I can’t record then I write everything down. My feelings after going out with friends. What it felt like to try something new. Nothing polished or perfect. Just a laptop and my hodge-podge playlist so I can look back with clarity instead of a hazy approximation.

Because here’s what I learned from losing our oriki: when we don’t document, we don’t just forget. We erase. And some things are simply too important to let disappear. On a much larger scale, we lose family recipes because we pass everything down and don’t write it. We lose ourselves when we don’t document the journey to becoming.

So I’m writing it down. All of it. Starting now, before one more thing disappears.

While I was on a hiatus from writing and publishing on Substack, I had a writing folder on Coda (kind of like Notion) where I explored ideas, lessons, things I’m learning, anything and everything. A bit like this Substack but for my eyes only. No pressure to post - just raw-dogging my thoughts.

So this is one of those posts I wrote last year that I thought you might like. Enjoy!

I am on my bed, staring at my open wardrobe. I avert my eyes and it darts back again. I hate that it’s untidy but I have too much to do today so I shut it. I promise myself to do it over the weekend when I have time.

The weekend comes. I am tired. Soul-draining, would-love-to-bed-rot tired. As if my unwillingness needed a logical excuse, I got a headache for most of the weekend. Another broken promise to tackle it. Again, I promise myself to do it next weekend.

The next dreaded weekend comes. I open the wardrobe, stare at the piles of clothes thrown and land as the spirit leads. I’m not the biggest fan of arranging clothes. I would rather wash my clothes by hand.

As a kid, I had a habit of not arranging my clothes because things were usually missing from my locker - a skirt today, a shirt tomorrow, tissue there, my cream reducing faster than I was using it. I started keeping a disarranged locker to discourage people from stealing. It mostly worked. Interestingly, it really helped with my memory - I always knew where everything in my locker was at any given time because I needed to find the order in the chaos. I returned my body cream to the same spot after shifting the pile of clothes. I would know I had a pocket tissue left and needed to get more from my box. Till today, I know when someone has touched or moved something in my room. Something something mother of invention.

Back to my current problem, one half of my wardrobe is in a mess. The other part is usually arranged. Everything has its place and it’s easy to put everything back into its place even when I’m in a rush. So I need to assess the disarranged situation and come up with a game plan.

1. Remove the top pile of clothes and see how the bottom pile is.

2. Fold each item that doesn’t need ironing.

3. Put the unironed clothes at the back of my chair to procrastinate (I do all my ironing at once, another chore I don’t like).

4. Put each item in their section - home clothes, pajamas, tops, blouses and so on.

5. Hang what needs to be hung but doesn’t need ironing.

6. Repeat for each section of the wardrobe.

I listen to a true crime podcast as I bring the clothes out. Okay, seems like most of my clothes are arranged under the mess. All I need to do is fold a few clothes and the rest and I’m done.

After all that dread and procrastination, it turned out to take just 20 minutes - far less than a single podcast episode.

This made me think about time and how much of it we spend avoiding the mundane:

• In recent times I have noticed that sitting in the mundane is a rare skill. I have realized that one of the reasons I don’t like arranging clothes is that it is dull and repetitive. I can turn off my brain and somehow complete the task without deep thought. As a creative person, boredom is a prison and a portal. Prison because it is a simple step-by-step process. Fold into half, tuck the arms, fold into two and another two. Done. A portal because a creative’s best friend is boredom. Unless I have something else to distract me, my brain ultimately wanders which can be gold for me. I have had some of my best ideas sitting in boredom.

• I don’t sit in boredom as often as I need to. As I have said, some of my best ideas have been at peak boredom but I always find some way to avoid that. Podcasts, Netflix, music or something else must occupy my time. Thinking about it, audio podcasts or music are better because Netflix considerably increases the time I use to do the task so maybe I’m not the best multi-tasker like I thought. Even while writing this, I am listening to music. Although sometimes when I am writing fiction, I might realize the music is distracting me and stop listening for a while. I need to learn to sit in boredom and be comfortable. There is a lot of gold for me to mine there.

• It makes me deeply sad that there’s always something to distract us from our thoughts. The barrier to imagination is high and the barrier to entertainment is at an all-time low. Just a click and you’ve found your latest distraction - bed-rotting and binge-watching for hours. That’s one of the reasons I deleted TikTok. Although I miss checking up on my favorite creators, it took up too much of my time. I started justifying it by saying it increased my knowledge which yes it did but it reduced my productivity and attention span which I still feel the ripple effects till now. In a few years, raw creativity might be hard to come by. Boredom is a necessity that leads to invention but we fill our times with energy takers and bed-rot and brain-rot. Not to sound like a grumpy, old woman but I miss being a kid when being outside and boredom could make the greatest memories ever.

• Sometimes I procrastinate because I don’t inherently understand the concept of time. I will be the first to admit that sometimes I struggle with estimating how long an activity will take. My sister can look at the same pile of clothes and give an accurate estimate. My answer will be “I don’t know” and I genuinely won’t. Either way, the task did not take as long as I believed it would be. I thought folding clothes would take ages and it took almost 2 weeks dreading a task that took 20 minutes. I guess I just need to start the damn thing - business, creative idea, fiction idea. Whatever. Chase curiosity. Start that business. Build the community you want to exist in the world. Go down the rabbit hole. After all, it didn’t kill Alice. It gave her the most delicious fever-dream experience I loved reading about. So it might do the same for me.

• It isn’t that bad. The task had taken so much real estate in my brain. For over 2 weeks, I was in a cycle of thinking about it. Each time I opened the wardrobe or left it open, it was always at the back of my brain. I definitely lost calories thinking about doing it. I didn’t know how many things I needed to fold or how disarranged my wardrobe was but my brain had defaulted to the worst of the worst and pumped my brain with how bad it was going to be so I was pre-tired and dreading it without even fully understanding the extent of the task. Sometimes, whatever it is isn’t that bad once we are done. Once again, just start the damn thing.

So I closed my now tidy wardrobe and decided to pen my thoughts so that next time I feel overwhelmed, I can read this, feel sufficiently whelmed and just do the damn thing. Tell myself: Just begin. It’s never as bad as the brain makes it seem.

Hi you! 👋

I bought a new toothbrush. You know, for the new year. New sheets, new toothbrush, a clean room that’s almost as good as new. All to usher a new and improved Ope.

I hate my new toothbrush. It is too big for my mouth. After brushing, I also have to check that it hasn’t broken my teeth - it has the double blessing of being too hard.

So I have three options:

• Manage the toothbrush for the recommended 3-4 months of use

• Go back to my old toothbrush till I find a new one.

• Find an entirely new toothbrush to use.

The thing about being an adult is that your will is completely free, so I’m not actually talking about toothbrushes (also I am because this did happen to me and is the inspiration for this post).

Sometimes, we put too much pressure and expectation on a new year to completely reinvent our lives and it simply won’t. Once things are hard, we might return to our old toothbrush - it’s familiar. But if you want to do a 180, you have to do new things. You can’t use the same mindsets and habits to do that.

I also don’t have to manage the toothbrush. It’s okay to try something new and decide you like something else better. You don’t like your new job, it’s okay to pivot. I’m not saying don’t even try and after one misunderstanding decide that you’re done. But it is okay to also leave when something no longer serves you. We see this all the time. Young John is more of a musician than a producer these days and Adekunle Gold is the many-faced god of music.

Oh and the best thing about being an adult? You can just do things - hard, scary, silly, fun, funny. Just not terrible things. Never that.

You see, Cinderella taught us the right story after all. You don’t change forever just because the clock strikes midnight.

This year, I want to try, do and launch things. Such as this, writing a post that’s less than 500 words - I’m a chronic long-form writer so while this hurts my brain in the short-term, it would allow me to be more consistent and publish more. Another thing I am doing is writing fiction on my other newsletter so if you love reading fiction, you should subscribe and share with someone who loves reading fiction.

So here’s my weird tangent: Yes, it’s a new year but you don’t put too much pressure or too many expectations on yourself. Sometimes a new year is simply another day and a continuation of the rest of your life. Sometimes, it’s beautiful, sometimes it’s crappy but it’s all yours.

Hi you👋🏾

How have you been? I have not written here in months. I have missed writing to you.

This newsletter has been at the back of my mind and I have been pushing it and feeling miserable. Partly because I wanted to publish a post every weekend at the beginning of the year and now months have passed without me uploading a post.

On one hand, I feel like I am in a vicious cycle of “failing”. I have been mentally seeing myself write and written a few drafts here and there but nothing so meaningful. But I have come to realize that failure is only failure when you give up. And I refuse to give up.

I got an email yesterday of a new subscriber to this newsletter so here I am at 2am, writing. Because if I do not write, I will keep procrastinating and you know what they say about procrastination and it being a dirty bloody thief. Seyi Vibez’s chaotic melody is blasting in my ears followed by A Thousand Years by Christina Perri. Much like my On Repeat playlist on Spotify choices, these past few months have been wonderfully chaotic and have filled my soul in ways I could never have imagined.

I took an unintentional break in April. There were a number of holidays in April and as the holiday spirit took a hold of me, I told myself I will write once the holidays were over, then another excuse and another till they built a tower. But like Jenga, I am seeing the tower fall with each sentence I write.

This singular decision has snowballed into months of not writing and that has made me think of decisions and their cost implication.

What is the cost of a decision?

That question has been weighing on me lately. I am aware of the domino effect of taking (or not taking) a decision. When I was younger, one of the things I looked forward to seeing in cartoons were dominos falling. I was fascinated by those tiles that seemed to fall forever and weirdly, it was calming.

Now, as an adult, I am thinking about the domino effect of our decisions.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, domino effect means a cumulative effect produced when one event initiates a succession of similar events.

In retrospect, some of the seemingly small decisions I have made has such a huge impact of my life. One decision to go for an event for no-code professionals in tech allowed me to meet 4 amazing girls and that is one of the best decisions I have made in a long time.

I am sure you have some instances like this too. Decisions that seemed so small in the moment but can lead you to a lifetime of gratitude for that seemingly “tiny” decision with a gigantic positive effect.

A decision to try a book out can lead to a lifetime of reading. A decision to go for an event can lead to you to meet your soulmates (friends and lovers). A decision to take your career seriously can lead to unbelievable growth - 10x, 20x and announcing unbelievable feats with the rocket emoji 🚀

In April, I took the decision to walk 10k steps and while I haven’t walked those number of steps everyday, I have had fluctuating steps depending on my schedule, from 5k (often) to 15k (rarely) steps and I have seen the results of that decision. I have lost some weight and while this is not so noticeable in my physique, this encourages me to take my walks seriously.

Another decision was a trip to Abeokuta with my girls and that trip is imprinted in my mind. I was exposed to an idyllic life, a sharp contrast to the hustle, bustle and tussle of living in Lagos. It was a wonderful trip that reinforced my love for travel and exposure to different ways of life and perspectives.

Last year, my friend Gift made a decision to change her life and today her life has changed drastically. She wrote about it in this blog post: 2023 in Review — Recap, Lessons, and the Future. To me, she’s a living testament of domino effects and I am in awe of her growth.

However, the reality is that results of a decision aren’t always positive. You have to be prepared that a few decisions can lead to negative results. And for me, that’s okay.

But I’m committed to writing this newsletter and at times like these when consistency fails (I’m only human 🥹), I always remember Blessing Abeng’s Brush your teeth: how to be consistent article and it always reinvigorates me. What matters is that I make the decision not to quit.

So my question to you today is: What decision can you make today? What is the cost of not taking that decision?

See you next week 💜

Happy new month my people 💜

I love that April is starting on a good note; it’s the beginning of all beginnings. It’s a new week, new month and new quarter. Plus, it’s a public holiday which makes me giddy with excitement.

How was your Q1? For me, it was a quarter of rest. I have been feeling exhausted, especially mentally and I had to prioritize rest to continue the marathon of life. Did you meet all your goals? If you didn’t meet your goals for Q1, that’s fine. Remember that life is a journey and there will be pitfalls but what matters is that you pick yourself up and continue when you stumble.

For Q2, I want to go hard and not go home. I want be laser focused on self-improvement and growth, health and fitness, rebuilding and improving my friendships, and so on. There are some exciting things I want to launch for TS20 this quarter and I can’t wait for you guys to see them.

If you haven’t evaluated your Q1, here’s how to do so:

1. Reflect: Reflect on the first three months of the year and think about what happened. What are your key takeaways? What lessons have you learned?

2. Celebrate your champagne showers: Now celebrate your wins. These don’t have to be grand accomplishments, it could also be something “small” like not drinking soda for a month.

3. Habits you need to drop: Think of the habits you need to say bye to. To do this, you need to think of the things that didn’t go as planned. What was the underlying reason: laziness, procrastination, lack of motivation, lack of focus? You need to make a plan on how to drop those habits to improve the quality of your life. For example, you can drop procrastination by identifying the triggers that allow you procrastinate: could it be obsessively cleaning your room because you’re avoiding a task. A plan could be the implementing the Habit Loop: Cue, Routine, Reward. Rather than procrastinating and not working out, you can set your alarm first thing in the morning which is the cue; the routine could be putting your gym clothes and trainers in front of your wardrobe or your desk or wherever you tend to go to first; the reward would be getting to wear gym cute outfits or a cheat day for consistently going to the gym.

4. Set an overall theme for Q2: Choose the aspects to focus your Q2 on: work, relationships, family, self-improvement, etc.

   To make it more fun, you can choose to have cute names for it. For example, in my bag era; in my relaxing and spoiling my loved ones era; go hard and don’t go home; work and chill; making my therapist proud; on becoming a productive machine; my best quarter yet; you get the point.

5. Set your goals: Now that you have a theme for the quarter, break it into manageable sections by setting monthly goals and a plan to achieve them.

However, I understand that some of us may be feeling unmotivated as the months pass by, trust me, I’ve been there so I know the feeling.

On thinking about how I stayed motivated in university to achieve my goal of graduating with a First Class, I had a flashback to a very simple process I used to motivate myself.

During my first semester exams in my first year, I struggled with waking up to read in the middle of the night. The weather was cold and my bed was warm like drinking pepper soup on a rainy day. It was also hard because there was no light and I had to use my lamp to read. My school had 24/7 light but during exams, the power was off and I had also gotten used to always having light so it was stressful to suddenly be pulled back into an age of darkness. Granted the generators came on at night but for 5 or so hours.

I knew I assimilate best in the middle of the night, so it was a no-brainer that I needed to be awake at that time to read. Sure, I could read during the day (which I also did) and rest at night because hostel was usually noisy but the middle of the night was peak reading time as it was usually very quiet and I didn’t need music to drown out other people’s voices to concentrate. I could read as I like as my brain assimilates in the environment I preferred.

I knew I had to fix it. When I was feeling sleepy, I would go through the Instagram accounts of people who motivated me to study Mass Communication: Bolanle Olukanni, Toke Makinwa, Mo Abudu, Kemi Adetiba and other phenomenal women in media.

I reminded myself that these people sacrificed something to get to where they are and while I don’t know what they sacrificed, I could sacrifice what was within my control: a few hours of sleep.

It was a serious motivator for me to stay up even if it was for an additional hour or two hours to understand what I read better.

Enter the motivation sheet📝

The motivation sheet is exactly what it sounds like, a sheet to keep you feeling motivated throughout the year and it’s aligned with your personal and professional achievements.

This motivation sheet is pretty basic and works great for me so feel free to adapt it to whatever works for you. I’ve kept it as simple as possible without overcomplicating it because sometimes when we are presented with something complex, we don’t execute it.

It’s a bunch of questions, think of it as a pro and con sheet: the things I would gain when I take an action or choose a path vs the things I could potentially lose out on if I don’t take that step.

Here’s how I start building mine:

1. I start by listing out the people that embody the traits I want: What would Jesus do? What would Beyoncé do? Let’s look at an example of a creator who wants to create more content for social media to become an influencer. Who do you think embodies the traits you want to consistently create content? Maybe it’s Salem King or Dimejii or Alma Asinobi or TheSocialMediaOga.

2. I think about the pros and cons of a decision. What would I gain when I do said decision and what do I stand to potentially lose out on? For example, I want to start working out regularly, the pros could be improved sleep quality, improved physical health, mental alertness while the cons could be continued feelings of lethargy, potential health risks and lack of focus due to constant tiredness.

To make it super easy for you, I have created a motivation sheet in Google Docs filled with the important questions you need to reach peak motivation. Simply make a copy and fill it in. Remember, the goal of this motivation sheet is to explore possibilities and understand the potential outcomes of your decisions. It’s not about having all the answers right now, but about considering different paths and their impacts on your life.

If you are a fan of Notion, should I make this motivation sheet into a template?

Share this newsletter with your friends and get them to subscribe so they don’t miss out on helpful resources like this.

That’s all for this week folks 💜

Something I really loved this week:

📝 Newsletter: Lade writes this amazing newsletter for marketers called Marketing For Geeks and in this article, she interviewed Daniel Orubo, Head of Content at PiggyVest, for a deep dive into their content machine. It’s a really cool article. Click on this link to read the deep dive on the cool Fintech kid on the block and how they used content to generate 40k app downloads.

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Show love 💜

Happy International Women’s Month, my beautiful women. I hope this month has been filled with love and light and kindness and laughter.

Today’s post is part rant and part admiration for the people I admire the most: women.

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I love love love International Women’s Month. It’s a day that keeps me inspired and in awe of the countless achievements of women despite historically being disadvantaged.

But, it’s also quite a sad month because I remember that as a civilization, when it comes to women’s issues, we are not as advanced as we think.

A few years ago, I was having a conversation with a guy for the first time. That conversation is seared in my brain like branding livestock because of a seemingly simple question.

It went like this:

“What’s your dream car?”

I didn’t hesitate because I knew, saying it was as easy as I knew the location of the ICJ (as a government nerd). “A Porsche”, I mulled over for a few seconds. “Preferably a Cayenne”.

“You’re materialistic o,” he said in a berating tone, as though he was superior to me. “Why put that pressure on a man to give you a Porsche? Why not be more realistic and say a Range Rover or a G-Wagon that your husband will own and you can be using it when he’s not? He will buy you a small car to be using around.”

I thought I had gone crazy for a second because I remembered the question being about my dream car. There was nothing about a husband or man in the equation. I looked at his face, to make sure he wasn’t a Boomer in a Gen Z body.

When I told him I’d work hard to get my dream car that had nothing to do with a man. He told me that I am a fine girl and I should be a trophy wife. If my husband allows me to work, that’s fine. Or he can open a business so I wouldn’t get bored. I remember thinking, what in the 1930s is this conversation?

By the end of that conversation, I knew we couldn’t truly be friends.

After I got back to my hostel, I looked in the mirror and asked myself how I got into a conversation with a person who thinks like that but they don’t write it on the forehead. What about me showed that I couldn’t work to afford my dream car? I started to feel odd, deflated and honestly, a bit ashamed. I knew his reason for taking like that was because I was a woman. I have never heard that a man should be realistic when he says he wants to a Ferrari or Lamborghini. To him, women should be the neck, taking scraps that have fallen from the table of a man.

Funny enough, I have heard the same person rant about women that don’t want to and how they are “lazy” to expect everything provided or handed over to them. Such an irony.

That conversation signaled to me, not too subtly, that I should not have big dreams and if I hadn’t been raised by a woman who made me realize that my dreams can be as boundless as the oceans and as uncountable as the stars, I might have internalized that message and thought there were dreams beyond my reach.

In that moment, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s words rang true. You should aim to be successful but not too successful otherwise you’d threaten the man.

Now, when men ask me questions to gauge how “materialistic” I am, I say the most absurd things because it speaks volumes of the man. One quality I look for in my people that I do not compromise is support. I want you to support my big audacious dreams as a person, not as a woman. For my people, there is nothing like too much support. If you want to build a seven-figure business from scratch or be a tech founder, why should I say you can’t? Heck, if you want to build a rocket and fly to the moon, you should by all means. Other people have done it and they certainly don’t have 2 heads (the baby boomer in me has jumped out). My thought process usually is: Who am I to tell you what your destiny is?

I was raised in an era where women would say what a man can do, a woman can do better. I was raised in the time of women who by virtue of embodying excellence, defying expectations and by doing so created a legion of women who knew they could do anything they wanted.

I was raised with Dora Akunyili; a legend among the people. A woman who did things that was deemed impossible and single handedly saved countless lives because of her passion and dedication to the eradication of fake drugs.

I was raised with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, an exemplary woman doing feats that are yet to be replicated as finance minister. She has gone taken her local achievements to a global scale.

The sad part was that conversation wasn’t an isolated incident. This need to tell me to mould my life around a man. On the day I submitted my project, I heard two things:

Marry soon so that you will not be feeling bigger than your husband with your qualifications.

Quickly marry so you will not become too picky about the man who wants to marry you.

It didn’t matter that I worked my ass off and graduated with a first class. That was secondary, after all: “You will still marry a man and if he doesn’t want you to work, you must listen because he’s the head of the house”.

I’ve heard a man say a woman shouldn’t buy a car no matter how much she’s earning to open the dating pool and not be restricted to men in her circle. I’ve heard a lot about what women should do and how they should do it.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. There are amazing men in my life who are supportive and all-round great people. I hope they never lose that.

Can you relate to this? Let me know in the comments or reply to this newsletter (via email) to let me know your thoughts.

My women, I want to tell you that your dreams are valid. God (or a higher power you believe in) has given you all the power and tools you need to succeed, you just need to tap into your inner potential. No man can make your destiny or has the power to do so.

Here are some positive affirmations for you this week:

1. I am strong, capable, and resilient, no matter the challenges I face.

2. My voice is valuable and my opinions matter.

3. I embrace my uniqueness and celebrate my individuality.

4. I am worthy of respect and deserving of kindness.

5. I am in charge of my happiness and I choose to live joyfully.

6. I am more than enough, just as I am.

7. I am a beacon of creativity and inspiration.

8. I trust in my ability to navigate life with wisdom and grace.

9. I am a warrior, equipped with courage and determination.

10. I radiate positivity and attract success in all areas of my life.

Never forget that you are amazing and I’m rooting for you. I hope you have a fantastic week ahead 💜

Happy new month 🫶🏾 I love leap years because they come once every four years and I think that’s so exciting. If you want to learn more about it, click here for the history of leap years.

Share The Striving 20s

During the AFCON Finals, the whole nation was buzzing: Nigeria vs Côte d'Ivoire. It was a memorable night and Nigeria was alive; generators were turned on, X (FKA Twitter) was rambunctious, friends and a few companies arranged watch parties, people were both deafening jubilant when Nigeria was winning and quietly expectant once it looked like the other team was going to win.

Happiness was thick in the air and banter was easily exchanged, like a handshake. For the first time in a while, Nigerians were fully united. People momentarily forgot about their hardships and the economy having a severe case of toddler tantrums. On X, it was as though it was Nigeria vs the whole of Africa. Everyone was curious, even those that didn’t watch the match and periodically checking for scores through friends and family or on X.

Sadly, when the final whistle blew, Nigeria lost. Banter about winning was left in the drafts or deleted, women who watched football for the first time said never again and swore to wash their hands off the sport.

When we lost, I saw a few pieces on the triumphs of the underdogs. It got me thinking about underdogs and that’s what today’s newsletter is all about.

Who are the underdogs?

An underdog can be individuals, teams, or something facing overwhelming odds or disadvantage compared to their competitors or opponents. They usually come from less privileged backgrounds, have fewer resources, or face significant obstacles. Underdogs can be found in various contexts, including sports, business, politics, and personal endeavors. What makes them underdogs is that they still preserve or achieve success against all expectations. It often brings to mind inspiring stories of resilience and triumph.

🌬️ Avatar: The Last Airbender

One of my favorite animations ever ever ever, Avatar: The Last Airbender is a riveting story of growth, transformation and triumph. As the last surviving Airbender, Aang has to master all four elements (air, water, fire, and earth) and bring balance to the world. Aang initially struggles with the weight of his responsibilities as the Avatar and faces numerous challenges along the way, including mastering the elements, confronting powerful enemies, and uniting warring nations. Despite his young age and lack of experience, Aang is determined to fulfill his destiny and restore peace to the world.

Throughout the series, Aang and his friends, Katara, Sokka, and later Toph and Zuko, face overwhelming odds and adversaries that have mastered the elements beyond the traditional sense (blood bending, anyone). They often find themselves outnumbered and outmatched, but they rely on their resourcefulness, teamwork, and determination to overcome obstacles and emerge victorious.

Aang and his friends face seemingly impossible challenges, but through courage, perseverance, and the power of friendship, they prove that even the most unlikely heroes can change the world.

🧟‍♂️ Attack on Titan

Anime uses the underdog story really well. In Attack on Titan (AOT), Eren Yeager vows to fight against giant humanoid creatures (who eat the puny little humans) known as Titans, despite initially being seen as weak and powerless. Characters such as Armin, Mikasa, Levi, and Eren push themselves and their abilities for a common goal: to protect humanity. They are forced to survive against seemingly impossible odds with the giants being cannibals and much much larger than the humans. Through loss and hope, they preserve and show an unprecedented ability to survive.

👨‍👦The Smiths

If you’re not an anime fan then you can look to the Smith family because the Smith men 🤝 underdog movies.

Father and son duo, Will and Jaden Smith star in The Pursuit of Happyness. This film follows Chris Gardner, a struggling salesman who overcomes homelessness and adversity to become a successful stockbroker.

In the 2010 version of The Karate Kid, Jaden Smith plays the role of Dre Parker, a young boy who moves to China with his mother and struggles to adapt to his new environment. He faces bullying and challenges from his peers, particularly from a group of martial arts students who practice kung fu. Despite his initial lack of training and experience, Dre is determined to stand up for himself and learns kung fu from Mr. Han (played by Jackie Chan), who becomes his mentor. Through hard work, perseverance, and dedication, Dre undergoes physical and emotional growth, eventually competing in a kung fu tournament against his adversaries. The film portrays Dre's journey from being an underdog to becoming a skilled martial artist, demonstrating themes of resilience, determination, and the triumph of the human spirit.

👩🏾‍💼Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (NOI); from Nigeria to the world, an unstoppable global force

One notable Nigerian figure with an underdog story is Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. She has become a global talent from Nigeria.

She has persevered to become one of the most influential economists and policymakers in the world. Despite growing up during a period of political unrest in Nigeria, she pursued her education with determination, eventually earning degrees from renowned universities; Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She went on to hold various positions at the World Bank, where she advocated for debt relief for developing countries and worked to combat corruption and improve economic governance.

In 2003, Okonjo-Iweala became the Finance Minister of Nigeria, making her the first woman to hold that position in the country's history and paving the way for others. During her tenure, she implemented significant economic reforms aimed at stabilizing Nigeria's economy and reducing poverty.

Throughout her career, she has faced criticism, opposition, and even threats to her personal safety. However, she has remained resilient and dedicated to her mission of improving the lives of people in Nigeria and beyond.

In 2021, she made history by becoming the first woman and the first African to serve as the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), further solidifying her status as a trailblazer and a symbol of hope everywhere.

♟️ Tunde Onakoya: It’s possible to do great things from a small place

Someone I think really exemplifies the underdog story but shines a beacon of hope and is doing his best to lift others out of a slump is Tunde Onakoya. Tunde Onakoya is a chess master and the founder of Chess in Slums Africa, a non-profit organization that empowers less privileged children in impoverished communities through chess. He is the living proof of his mantra: It is possible to do great things from a small place.

He stays hungry for growth; for himself, for Chess in Slums and never forgets where he came from. To me, he is an underdog for the underdogs.

Why people love underdogs.

People love underdog stories because they resonate with universal themes like perseverance, determination, resilience, overcoming adversity, and the triumph of the human spirit. These stories often inspire hope and belief in the possibility of success against all odds. Plus, cheering for the underdog can be a deeply emotional experience, as it reflects our own struggles and aspirations for triumph in the face of challenges.

As an underdog in Nigeria…

Being in your 20s in Nigeria currently feels like Sisyphus in Greek mythology who had to roll a boulder up a hill as punishment by Zeus but each time he reaches the top of the hill, the boulder rolls back down the hill and he has to do it all over again, for all eternity.

Although not everyone fits under this classification, most of us have to deal with limited opportunities, limiting societal expectations (worse if you are a woman), limited access to resources and even if you do get access to those opportunities, there are factors like electricity and internet costs to think about that are not always affordable.

In general, as a twenty-something, we are the underdogs of the adult world. With the sharp decline of purchasing power and challenges like unemployment; all the rising costs - food, transportation, water, rent- and so on, it can be so easy to lose faith.

For me, being an underdog means having the heart and the soul to fight for your success, against all odds. There are lots of Nigerians doing it, in Nigeria and abroad. You know them by their success stories; people who grew up dirt poor to become the top 1% of professionals in their field and work in the top 4 companies of their industry. Even people who grew up middle-class and have become global talents, celebrated and respected beyond the borders of Nigeria and Africa.

The underdog always has the potential to become the champion of their story. They have the most heart and are capable of achieving the extraordinary. Look in the mirror and tell yourself daily: it’s another day to become world class 🚀 (This is a super popular saying on X, idk who started it but it’s a powerful reminder ).

The thing that set underdogs apart? An unwavering belief in themselves coupled with a solid community of people who lift them up and support their dreams, people whose dreams for them are bigger than a galaxy = a star.

When the going gets tough, be tougher. Success often comes to those who refuse to quit. Be hungry to prove yourself; not necessarily for anyone’s sake but to reach your full potential. Defy expectations and show the world what you’re capable of.

Become so great that the soundtrack to your life will be the song used during prize-giving day till it is your reality and we will stand up, stand up for the champion, for the champion, stand up. For you, the champion. You will push the boulder up the hill and it will stay there, just believe in yourself, no matter the odds.

I’m rooting for you, I want to see you succeed and break barriers. The whole world is too ✨

See you next week💜

Btw, for the foreseeable future, I’ll be publishing on Saturday evenings instead.

Something I’m loving this week:

🎬 Series: I am currently watching The Rookie, an underdog story of sorts. The plot follows the life of John Nolan, a man who joins the police force in his forties. As the oldest rookie, we see his resilience and determination to be on the force and stay on it. I know I’m not the only one seeing the budding romance between officers Bradford and Chen. You can watch it on Netflix.

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Show love 💜

How was your Valentine’s Day? Did you enjoy it with your special someone? Or did you spend the day at work?

Today’s post is a long one. Let’s talk about love.

I have one of those faces. An original unoriginal face; the type that tugs at something deep in you and makes you remember a fond moment with someone else. I get these a lot: You look a lot like a friend of mine, you smile like my cousin, you remind me of my first love.

Even when I went to the hospital last week, the doctor told me I look just like one of his teachers. Coincidentally, we come from the same state. Kind of eerie.

At first, I used to hate it. The expectation when they tell me I look like Lagbaja and Tamedo* and the disappointment when they realize I obviously don’t know the person from Adam. Some people will just inform me while others will want to probe deeply, curious as to my relationship with someone I resemble closely. I used to wonder: Why can’t I have an ethereal face chiseled by the Yoruba gods? Why can’t I have an unforgettable face that you know God took days to perfectly craft and was so amazed at this masterpiece that cannot be repeated for centuries, a once in a lifetime face?

Then, I started to feel indifferent. Slightly irritated, even. Yes, I know I look like someone you know. I’m over it and you should be too. There are cultures that believe that people are created in twos but in my case, I was reminded of Black Orphan ( one of the best shows in my opinion). A replica of other people but instead of being the main character, I was the clone.

One day, I had a conversation that changed my perception. A man stopped me and started with the usual “you look like someone I know” spiel but something about his expression made me stop and listen. His face was vulnerable; a mix of hope, regret and awe etched openly on his face. It stopped me in my tracks. In essence, he was wearing his heart on his face.

According to him, I reminded him of his first love, a love that was so beautiful yet painful. It was one of those relationships everyone believed would end in marriage. A young love tale but they were both not ready for the commitment. They broke up because of differences he later realized could have been solved with better communication and more understanding. But towards the end, he was jaded; he had put her in a box and loved her in that box then became disillusioned when she matured and was stepping out of the box.

While she reached out to him, as friends, severally after the breakup, he wasn’t in the space for a reconciliation, for the demotion to friendship, for acting like everything was fine. Eventually, she got tired and stopped messaging him. Years after, he reached out and she never responded but he could not bring himself to blame her or be angry. He knew he had missed out on his window of opportunity, had acted childish by resorting to silent treatment and was ready to deal with the consequences.

After his confession, he seemed embarrassed that he had confided in me, a total stranger.

That conversation changed me. It reminded me that the reason people get excited is because they see me in someone they love, platonic or romantic. If I can remind you of someone you love or loved, I have started to take it as a compliment. Now, I get excited too. Let my face remind you of someone you love or loved deeply. To remind you to cherish the love you have. To remind you that even though the love ended, it was there and it was real, it was beautiful even though it turned painful and heartbreaking. To remind you that you were once capable of loving so deeply, it shocked you the depth of your emotions. To remind you that you have loved once so you can love again so deeply and truly and completely.

I realize they might call or message or see the person to tell them they found someone that looks exactly like them. Actually, a woman tried to call her friend in my presence to tell her she had found her twinnie. She was insistent and so was I, that it wasn’t necessary but na she get the phone. Thankfully, her friend didn’t pick up. That would have been an super awkward conversation.

His story made me think of the love lifecycle but before I dive more into that, let’s define love first. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, love has many definitions. As a verb, it could be to cherish dearly or to feel a lover's passion, devotion, or tenderness for.

Every love story has its own lifecycle. Let’s look at the love lifecycle of Muna and Lekan.

Strangers

Muna and Lekan meet in a mutual friend’s birthday dinner. He notices her when she walks through the door and he can’t keep his eyes off her. He asks his friend who she is and wants to know more about her. As the night progresses, he strategizes how to causally bumps into her so he can have a few words with her. He hears her laughter throughout the night and thinks is the most beautiful sound ever. He wants to hear that laughter everyday and he wants to be the source of it.

Muna, on the other hand, noticed him before she sat down. She noticed him looking at her but she wants to play it cool. When they bump into each other, she likeshow he smells and asks questions so the smell can linger in her nose all night. She enjoyed this chat greatly and notes his intelligence. He asks for her number creatively and she smiles when she gives him, hoping it’s the start of something beautiful. Before she leaves the party, she asks their mutual friend about him and hears great things. She searches for him when her Uber is a minute away and they exchange goodbyes.

They are drawn to each other’s appearance, personality, or energy. A spark has been lit that day and they stay on each other’s minds.

She can’t wait for him to message and she sends him a message saying it was nice meeting him. Later that night, he responds by saying the same and asks if she got home safe and sound. She responds and they kick things off from there.

This is the beginning of their love story.

Tentative talking stage:

After the initial attraction, Muna and Lekan begins to explore each other’s personalities, interests, and values. They engage in conversations, ask questions, and gradually reveal more about themselves. This stage is crucial for building trust and emotional intimacy.

They text each other regularly. Lekan begins to tell Muna sweet nonsense and she giggles at his memes. He’s funny and she looks forward to his messages. Each time her phone buzzes, there’s a jolt through her heart and she realizes that she is beginning to have feelings for him. When it was nearing the 1 month mark of their taking stage, during one of their late phone calls, he notes they have been taking for 3 hours and how he loves to hear her voice and loves talking about her day. He confesses his feelings for her. She does the same.

There’s a renewed hope and you can smell the excitement in the air. Their talks become deeper. They share stories, experiences, and aspirations, gradually forming a stronger emotional bond. They talk about everything under the sun; their childhoods, dreams for the future, and even their fears and insecurities, creating a sense of trust and intimacy.

Lovers:

Lekan wants to take their relationship to the next level so he asks Muna to be his girlfriend after 3 months of talking stage. They’ve gotten to know each other better and they have a lot of shared interests. She enthusiastically says yes and they dive into the honeymoon stage.

As the relationship progresses, challenges inevitably arise. These could include differences in communication styles, conflicting schedules, or external stressors like work or family issues. How the couple navigates these challenges can significantly impact the strength of their bond.

In scenario A; they realize that love isn’t perfect but it’s worth fighting for. They allow for mistakes and grow together after a disagreement. They know they are not enemies and are moving towards a shared future of marriage and a lasting love. They overcome many challenges together and move to deepening their commitment by talking about the next stage. They express their love and dedication through meaningful gestures, words and actions. Lekan proposes to Muna and she says yes.

In scenario B; they realize they are not as compatible as they thought. Their fights get more intense. Muna dislikes the way Lekan talks to her during a fight and while she has addressed it several times, he always apologizes for his harsh words but never changes. Lekan doesn’t like how Muna doesn’t take criticism; she flares up and becomes withdrawn. They begin to notice other things they may have ignored or not seen during the talking stage. Here, they enter the awkward stage.

Awkward stage:

During the awkward stage, their relationship plateaus and then takes a deep nosedive into dissatisfaction. They think deeply about breaking up or continuing the relationship. Sometimes, a break up will eventually happen.

After their breakup, they enter another awkward stage. Should I call? Am I no longer in a place to call? Can I text? Can we be friends or act like strangers? Is it in my place to show care? Can I say I miss you? There are a lot of questions here and self-doubt, anger and betrayal.

Strangers/Friends:

In the final stage, they either continue to nurture their relationship, growing closer over time, or they realize that they are better suited as friends rather than romantic partners. Factors such as compatibility, shared values, and mutual respect play a crucial role in determining the outcome. They may eventually decide to get back together and enter the lovers stage, get married, build a life together, and grow old side by side. More often than not, they stop talking and become strangers.

This lifecycle isn’t always linear. For some it could be: strangers-taking stage. Others could be: strangers-friends-talking stage-lovers. Then there are the interesting ones: strangers-talking stage-lovers-strangers-friends-lovers-friends-lovers-strangers-lovers-friends-strangers. It could even be: strangers-talking stage-lovers-strangers-friends-lovers.

One thing about the love lifecycle is that it’s dynamic and doesn’t follow any script.

Let me know your thoughts on the love lifecycle in the comments. Also, share how your Valentine’s Day was with me. You can reply to this email. I’d love to hear your stories 💌

*Lagbaja and Tamedo is the placeholder for people in Yoruba. Think about it like a John or Jane Doe in the American movies for unidentified people or every Tom, Dick and Harry in the English world.

Initially, I wanted to write a post-Valentine’s Day article centered around the theme of love. I hadn’t decided what particular aspect to talk about: why do you believe in love, what’s the most important thing for you in a relationship, what’s the best gift someone has given you or something along those lines. Maybe next year.

For me, I think the best gift about love is love itself. It’s a gift to choose someone everyday, in spite of the hard times. I hope we all find someone we love deeply and they love us just as deeply.

My heart goes out to everyone that Valentine’s Day was a painful reminder of love lost: widows, people who found genuine love but isn’t the right time or aren’t in the right space for it, people just coming out of a relationship (long-term or not), and people coming to terms that their relationship will soon end.

To the people who enjoyed Valentine’s Day, cheers to you. To the the unserious lovers, the high school and university sweethearts, the ones giving love a chance after a long times, the second chances, and the deeply and madly happy lovers. Every type of love matters.

To the haters of love, your feelings are valid too. Not everyday love and light, some days trash talk love while eating your friend’s breakfast package.

Till next week,

With lots of love 💜

Things I loved this week:

🎶 Music recs: I have two songs on repeat. The first song is an oldie but a goodie and it has been stuck in a loop in my brain: A Thousand Years by Christina Perri. The other song has an unexpected artiste combination I didn’t know I needed till I heard it: Ruin by Usher and Pheelz.

🎧 Playlist: Btw, I created a playlist for Valentine’s Day. There are a lot of Nigerian classic love songs that brought back so many memories. Have a listen.

👩🏻‍💼+🎥: I’ve recently been spending a lot of time on YouTube and Beryl is a creator I love. I found Beryl on TikTok (when I used to be OBSESSED with that app) first and rediscovered here. I love how she connects with different cultures through food and her respectful and childlike curiosity. Her storytelling is emotional, funny and connects on a deeper level. Hers is a refreshing creative expression.

A few weeks ago, a friend wanted to pledge a subscription to this newsletter. In the spirit of the love month, if you’ve found any of my posts helpful, you can show love by donating. No amount is too small or too big (🤭). Show your support here.

If you can’t donate, you can share, comment, like and encourage your friends to subscribe to this newsletter. Thank you 🫶🏾

Show love 💜

Hello you 👋🏾

How’re you doing? I hope you have been healthy?

I couldn’t write a newsletter last week because I was really sick. Curling in bed with a fever reminded me how often I take my health for granted. I saw a video from Salem King where he speaks about how everyone complains when a room is either too hot or too cold but they don’t notice when the temperature is perfect; not too hot or too cold. The video is about growth but can be adapted to talk about health.

It made me think: how often do we stop and appreciate how amazing it feels to wake up in the morning feeling energized and ready to tackle the day? When you wake up and you feel good for weeks, you forget how good you have it. When you’re sick, it’s a different story, it’s all you can talk about and think about: my head hurts, my body hurts, I’m nauseous, everywhere is too cold, I have no appetite, and so on.

Suddenly, all those little things we could do without a second thought—like breathing through our noses, eating food without feeling nauseous or walking up a flight of stairs—become precious gifts that you can’t wait to be strong enough to do again.

Why wait until we're not feeling too good to start appreciating our health? Why not make taking care of ourselves a top priority every single day?

And so, today, I want to remind us to take our health seriously. Granted, you can’t truly stop mosquitoes from biting you and getting malaria but there are precautions you can take like buying a mosquito net, spraying your house with insecticide and shutting your doors to reduce the numbers of mosquitoes around.

Here are some health precautions we can take:

1. Get moving: Spending time in nature is like hitting the refresh button for your body and mind. It could simply be sitting outside with a good book, soaking some vitamin D. By moving, you find a way to get those endorphins flowing. Your body and mind will thank you for it.

2. Stress less: Find ways to de-stress and unwind, whether it’s through meditation or simply taking a few minutes to relax and do something you enjoy.

3. Rest up: Atp, I sound like a broken record but never underestimate the power of a good night’s sleep. Aim for at least 6 hours each night to help your body recharge and repair.

4. Spice up your meals: Eating healthy doesn't have to be boring. Get creative in the kitchen, experiment with new recipes and flavors, and make mealtime a fun and delicious adventure.

Now, let’s talk about what to do when you’re feeling sick:

1. Listen to your body: If you’re not feeling your best, don’t push yourself too hard even though it can be tempting to. Take a break, rest up, and give your body the time it needs to recover.

2. Stay hydrated: Drink plenty of fluids like water or herbal tea to keep your body hydrated and help flush out any nasty bugs.

3. Seek support: Don’t hesitate to reach out to friends, family, or healthcare professionals if you need a little extra help or support.

Right now, I’m aware of how lucky I am to have a body that's capable of bouncing back and getting back to its usual self. It made me appreciate all the little things that make life so wonderful, from food tasting the way they should to not being cold every second. It reminded me that our health truly is our greatest wealth.

So, let's cherish our health, prioritize self-care because life is too short to take our health for granted.

Btw, happy match day. I hope the Nigerian team wins AFCON tonight so we can be insufferable winners, not just finalists ⚽️

Stay healthy and see you next week💜

Things I loved this week:

😴: I found a YT video on why you might be feeling tired and really helpful tips to help you feel more rested.

🎥: If you were a bookworm and stopped reading, here’s a YT video you should watch.