This is an Adinkra symbol called Sankofa. It signifies choosing to learn from the past in order to inform the future. My tour guide in Rio chose to start the tour by pointing to this symbol in her guidebook. As we set off to explore the Little Africa quarters of Rio de Janeiro, she said something that stuck with me: We’re doing Sankofa right now.

One of my main sources of inspiration for visiting Brazil was the diasporic connection to Nigeria due to the transatlantic slave trade. I came expecting familiarity. What I didn’t anticipate was how my time in Brazil felt like a mirror that forced me to confront how much of indigenous Yoruba culture and heritage had been lost — or rather, intentionally suppressed. During my travels I learned that while Yoruba culture was brought to Brazil, Brazil has also historically shaped Nigeria. This bidirectional relationship turned personal when I interacted with the local cuisine. I was surprised to learn that one of my family’s Easter culinary traditions actually came from Brazil.

What we call ‘frejon’ was originally feijoada: a pudding of beans and coconut milk with toasted cassava flakes. Grounding familial traditions in broader history recovers the truth that what we take for granted today was once a novelty. At some point in the past century, Brazilian returnees showed my ancestors how to make this dish, and they chose to pass it down across generations, eventually reaching me.

The more I learned of this reciprocity between Brazil and Nigeria, the more I started to wonder: how might I, a member of the African diaspora, learn from the ways that Afro Brazilians clung to their roots? What should I be more intentional about preserving in the face of Westernisation?

To me, the answer lies in indigenous spirituality. My biggest takeaway from the guided tour of Little Africa was that despite fierce stigmatisation, African spiritual practices were intricately woven into the fabric of Brazilian cultural life, evolving into distinct forms. One such product of this intermingling is samba. The bulk of the tour involved retracing samba’s origins, which originated in this local community in Rio during the late 19th century.

Samba is rooted in Candomblé, emerging from terreiros de Candomblé. These are religious houses where worshippers of African gods composed dances to traditional drum rhythms. Candomblé is comparable with Santería in Cuba: religious practices that emerged through the blending of African spiritual traditions with Catholicism.

Through learning the spiritual origins of samba, one of the most iconic cultural exports of Brazil and the centrepiece of celebration at Carnival, I came to understand that African spirituality is bigger than religion. To limit indigenous spirituality to the Western lens of religion means to lose sight of what else it can offer us, beyond the question of which god or gods to worship.

As I looked into the mirror of my identity, I wondered what I might be able to learn through recovering knowledge of Ifa, the spiritual practices and philosophical knowledge system of my ancestors before colonialism.

In my research I came across the work of Sophie Oluwole, a Nigerian professor of philosophy who pioneered the study of Yoruba philosophy and was the first woman to earn a PhD in philosophy in Nigeria. Her seminal book Socrates and Orunmila, published three years before her passing at the age of 83 in 2018, puts Yoruba cosmology in direct conversation with Greek philosophy, in which she argues that Orunmila can be seen as a mythologised figure of philosophical wisdom not only in the same vein as Socrates, but also predating Greek mythology. Her point is that we are doing a disservice to magnitude of our African traditions if we reduce them to primitive myths. There is richness and complexity that lives in the spiritual practices of our ancestors, touching on metaphysics, computer science and core philosophical questions pertaining to the meaning of life.

Professor Oluwole dedicated her life’s work to proving that Western knowledge systems do not get to claim the centre of the universe. There is so much more we can learn when we make the radical decision of looking inward, to learn from what has been known and unknown by those that came before us.

So… what now?

A month has passed since my time in Brazil, but I remain motivated to learn more about my heritage. I hope that the more I learn, the more I can apply to my life, choosing to centre my values around African knowledge systems and ways of being. I am excited to continue to follow the lead of my tour guide and “do sankofa”.

As mentioned in my last piece, I am in the process of writing a book. What I didn’t mention was that it will go deep into the topic of African diaspora history, following my personal journey of learning about my complex matrilineal heritage.

Through learning about the past, the way that I see the world has changed in irrevocable ways. Much like Afro-Brazilians and the Aguda in particular, I learned a few years ago from relatives that I am a descendant of the Saro people, formerly enslaved Africans who were repatriated to Sierra Leone by the British Royal Navy before returning to their homeland, present day Nigeria. There is something sobering about being descended from people who were not only able to survive the brutality of the slave trade but also find their way back home to their land. This is what drives me to recover and understand the spiritual and philosophical knowledge systems of my ancestors.

I do this to honour them.

In the four years since then I’ve been on and off in my writing on this platform, but have always felt a sense of validation as a writer by knowing that I’ve created a space to share my writing with this online community. Through becoming open to the possibility of being seen, I could now explore my voice and go deeper in my reflections on life as it unfolds. There has also been something intimate about inviting friends and loved ones to engage with my writing alongside strangers. So like many others on Substack, I’ve loved what this space has done for enabling my pursuit of writing. One of my pieces even explicitly traces this evolution in my relationship with writing and seeing myself as a writer:

But somewhere along the way, I hit a ceiling in my growth without being aware of it. And as I progressed in my career and was building my life in London, writing became something I did but not really something that challenged who I was. Last year was my most consistent year in terms of posting, but posting isn’t the same as growing. Does posting on SoundCloud make you an artist? Does sharing content on Instagram make you a creative? Maybe. But what does it take to grow in your craft? I didn’t realise that the real work happens in between the thought pieces.

Writing changed my life when I decided to start writing a book. There is something that a book demands that necessitates reaching beyond myself. It is not enough to throw words on a page and call it a day. I have to engage in sustained research, think deeply about what my writing might mean from the perspective of the reader, and learn about the ecosystem of publishing. I started going out of my way to attend writing workshops and I sought out arts festivals to be inspired by other creatives.

I realised that there was so much to learn about the craft of writing and the journey of finding and re-finding my voice. I’ve been sharing excerpts of initial chapters with trusted friends and found the process of receiving feedback and iterating has pushed me in ways that writing on Substack alone never could. Through pursuing this path, my life has had to change to align with what it takes to grow into someone who can write a book.

It takes a village

For so long, I’ve thought that a writer’s life required a solitary path, perhaps because a few of the acclaimed writers I admire have said something to this effect. But the growth cannot happen alone. So I am no longer buying the Western notion of the lone wolf creative genius. Creativity is communal. And I don’t think that even engaging with ‘online community’ on platforms like Substack is enough. There is a subtle veil that is easy to hide behind when the creative process is limited to writing and sharing. The hard part is letting others in. Inviting friends and sometimes strangers into the work in progress, having subconscious assumptions surfaced and challenged.

I’m also not saying that you have to write a book to truly be a writer. It’s less about the end product than it is about the process of being in community and evolving through engaging with others. There are ways to do this both online and offline: libraries sometimes offer workshops, and there are so many great online and local communities for writers that share resources and provide spaces to connect with others on this journey.

One of my favourite artists, Thundercat, shared in an interview that he lives by the saying “Nothing makes up for time spent”. I interpret this as meaning that the time invested in the craft cannot be skipped in order to push yourself into becoming the best artist you can be. This is what I’m seeing too. I’m hopeful for what comes of this journey of becoming an author and growing deeper as a writer.

A few selected muses and resources on this topic:

• Thundercat on Creativity, Positive Mindsets & Finding His Sound — Youtube video

• Writing Our Legacy — an arts organisation focused on providing writing support and opportunities for people of colour in the UK. Their newsletter is great.

• National Centre for Writing’s Writing Hub — a curated page of online resources for writing and the book publishing process

• A Writing Practice to Help You Meet Yourself — Youtube video by Anna Howard ( on substack)

I’m a few weeks away from wrapping up year 1 at Harvard Business School, and I can’t help but notice how much ambition is concentrated in one small place, yet how little of it seems to know where it’s going.

That sounds more critical than I mean it to be. I don’t think ambition is an inherent problem. If anything, being surrounded by deeply ambitious people has pushed me to take my own ambitions more seriously. But there’s something I keep noticing, at HBS and in any space where aspiring leaders cluster: ambition can very easily become its own destination. You pursue optionality for the sake of optionality. You chase the next thing because the next thing is there to be chased. And somewhere along the way, the original question of what all of this is actually for dissipates.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how openly people talk about money being the core objective. There are people here who are hustling and grinding to get into a job where they have to give up 80-120 hours of their lives each week for work, but it’s a sacrifice they’re willing to make because the bag is secured. I have to respect the honesty, at the very least.

What’s harder to sit with is the gap between wanting power and having the courage to use it differently. I’ve met so many people here who are drawn to leadership, who have worked incredibly hard to get into rooms that most people will never get into, and who, when the moment comes to actually do something with that access, suddenly find reasons why it’s complicated.

“But I have a board of directors to report to.”

“But my boss wouldn’t approve.”

“But this is just the way things are done.”

“But I’m so close to a promotion.”

This is what happens when ambition runs on autopilot for long enough. You stop asking what you’re building toward and just keep building. The goals get achieved but then immediately replaced by new ones, and at no point do you stop to ask whether any of this is actually pointing somewhere you want to go.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the context of entrepreneurship, which has its own version of the same trap. Since sharing that I’ve returned to building in edtech and social entrepreneurship, the first questions people ask are: Y Combinator, when? Are you gonna raise a VC round? As though those are the only legitimate markers of seriousness and building something that actually solves a problem isn’t enough of a goal on its own.

The lines have gotten so blurred between being a genuine problem-solver and being a venture-capital-fundraiser that people conflate the two. Entrepreneurship has become its own prestige vehicle. The goal isn’t to build something useful, it’s to build something fundable, which are not always the same thing. If the future belongs to whoever gets the biggest check from investors, then I’d like to unsubscribe.

In the past, I’ve sought out the other extreme and dealt with a different tension. When I lived in New York, I got involved with hyperlocal grassroots movements and found a lot of meaning in this work. But I also felt weighed down by how much of the energy was oriented around resistance. Yes, resistance is important. But I kept feeling like something was missing. We knew the system was broken. We knew we wanted something different. But what does different actually look like? Where do we go from here?

I’ve sat with that question for a while now. And what I keep coming back to is that reform has limits, resistance has limits, and yet most of the ambitious people I encounter aren’t seriously considering the third option: designing something new altogether. I see why this is the case, because the status quo will never ask you to undermine it. There are invisible constraints on what we allow ourselves to imagine, shaped by what has existed before, and what is palatable to the people with power to fund things. The thing about autopilot ambition is that it’s very good at optimizing for the world as it is. But what about imagining and building toward what the world could be?

Tapping into my imagination more intentionally has been easier said than done, but I think I’ve found a way to do this more effectively in recent weeks. The thing I’m doing differently is pushing myself to flex the muscle of creative thinking and then to apply this capability through various experiments. So it’s kind of a two step process: getting back in touch with the creative, non-conforming parts of me, then harnessing this in spaces for nitty gritty design and/or bigger picture systems thinking.

What I’ve noticed is that the entrepreneurial crowd is very keen on being at the forefront of driving change, but a lot more ambivalent about what the change actually is, as long as they’re the ones steering it. The radical left, on the other hand, does a much better job of imagining what the world could look like and what the ideal actually is, but struggles more with the transition. How do we get there? What do we build with what we have right now?

This brings me to the iconic Audre Lorde quote: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” So, what do we do? Do we build new tools? And if so, where do we even start?

For me, the answer so far has been to stay curious in small ways. Vibe coding, connecting with radical thinkers in Boston, picking the violin back up, journalling, doodling. Getting back into my creative bag in whatever form that takes. The act of making time for creative expression feels like rebelling against some unspoken rule that adulthood means passive consumption.

I’m still figuring out what this adds up to. But the question of “ambition to what end?” keeps me honest. I don’t have a clean answer yet, and I’m okay with that. What I do know is that sitting with this question holds me accountable in a way that having all the answers never could.

CEO of Cloudflare, $80 billion company, by his own mention. Before opening the floor to questions from the MBA class, he told us what keeps him up at night: the rise of a ‘Lost Generation’. He saw visions of late Gen Z and early millennials, not senior enough to be protected from layoffs, yet not young enough to be digitally native to AI tools, thus stranded between the world they trained for and the one that’s arriving.

So I raised my hand and asked what he was doing about this looming skill divide, since he’d named it as something that “kept him up at night” and was more than happy to flex that he leads an $80 billion company.

His answer was deferential. He said something about how he can’t pay his outperforming employees the same as the ones being left behind. I appreciated the honesty, even if I wasn’t sure what else to do with it.

What stayed with me was this: we had arrived at the exact same conclusion from completely opposite directions. Economic inequality is rising, it’s going to keep rising, and something is clearly wrong. But the feeling underneath that shared conclusion was entirely different. My version of ‘something is wrong’ is about how people are going to afford to eat. His version, and he said this explicitly, was the rise in populism. Which is a polite way of saying: as a billionaire, how do I make sure the people don’t eat me?

I’ll be direct: I don’t think billionaires should exist. The existence of an $80 billion company whose CEO ‘can’t’ (read: won’t) solve the wage problem he’s describing isn’t a puzzle to me. That’s the system working exactly as designed, distributing its outcomes in ways that exacerbate inequality and concentrate power among an ever-shrinking minority. Billionaires’ existence and decisions are the evidence that the system has already failed.

A billion is genuinely hard to visualize. Most of us assume “a lot” and move on. But a million seconds is around 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. That distance in monetary terms is what we’re actually talking about when we use the word billionaire.

There’s something revealing about a person with that much power and capital expressing concern and then leaving it there, as though the concern itself is a contribution to society. To me, this reflects the rise in performative social justice. In a post-DEI world, showing concern is a substitute for actually caring.

At business school I keep hearing from a lot of powerful people that they’re really worried right now. But self-centered concern is not the same as accountability. The people with the most power to change this are the same ones expressing worry from a safe distance all the while choosing to invest in systems that cause economic inequalities. The system doesn’t fix itself, and it looks like it won’t be fixed by the people it’s working for.

This is why I’ve been drawn to learn from those building the ‘solidarity economy’, and thought I’d share some thoughts on why this movement brings me hope. As mentioned in my last piece, I’ve felt compelled to think more deeply in the role I can play in building the kind of futures I want to see. For me, this has meant educating myself on social movements that seek to meaningfully shift power and ownership of resources to communities and working people. The solidarity economy movement is one of such initiatives that have emerged in response to the systemic flaw of rising socioeconomic inequalities. There are many articulations of what the solidarity economy means, but the one that resonates most with me is “the process of building economic practices and institutions based on the values of equity in all dimensions (race, class, gender, sexuality, and so on), cooperation and solidarity, economic and political democracy, sustainability, and pluralism” (Kawano and Matthei for Nonprofit Quarterly, 2020). Examples of the solidarity economy in action already exist, and include worker cooperatives, credit unions, and community land trusts among other models.

As someone who sees myself using my career to focus wholly on advancing systems change to build a better future, grounding my understanding of what the world could be in the writings and real world case studies of community leaders building the solidarity economy is a beacon of hope. It means that, unlike certain CEOs, I can channel my concern for the world into advocating for actual solutions.

I’m deriving hope from action, because wishful thinking and well-meaning concern will never be enough.

Recommended further reading:

• What is the Solidarity Economy? (Steve Dubb, 2026)

• System Change: A Basic Primer to the Solidarity Economy (Emily Kawano and Julie Matthaei, 2020)

A week ago, I visited San Francisco for the first time. I was struck by the natural beauty of a region that is now associated with being at the epicenter of technological advancement.

During my time there, I spent much of it with my cousin and his wife, who both work in tech, as well as catching up with a friend, who also works in tech. Our conversations about life inevitably shifted to discussions about AI, uncertainty surrounding the future of their jobs, and implications for society at large. What was certain was how much more pressure they were facing to work faster and deliver higher quality end products. They were working way longer hours than expected for the laid back, Bay area culture they’d signed up for years ago. Even when they weren’t at work, they still found themselves thinking about their jobs and what AI means for the future.

It was kind of unsettling to witness the bubble firsthand, as the AI billboards and ads were everywhere. You literally could not miss it. That alongside the glaring social inequality felt like a live action Black Mirror episode at times.

As a Gen-Z, I am among those who had the unique childhood experience of growing up with the advent of social media and witnessing the shift from when digital life was referred to as ‘the net’ to now becoming ‘the algorithm’.

I keep thinking to myself: it wasn’t always like this. So what happened?

In an earlier reflection from last year, I looked back fondly on how it felt to surf the web as a child. At the time, I’d assumed that I wouldn’t be able to experience that feeling of awe and innocent curiosity while online again. But now I feel differently, as I’ve been intentionally experimenting with my digital habits. What’s been most important is realizing that it’s not enough to cut out certain platforms or temporarily ‘detox’ only to return to the same experiences that simply were not good for me.

There is a vacuum that is created when you choose to divest from the worst offenders for doomscrolling and instant dopamine-seeking. I personally don’t believe that the solution is to simply act like these platforms don’t exist, as this negates the fact that there is so much that these spaces of digital exchange can offer. What I’ve instead found helpful has been deciding how I do and don’t want to engage with digital life. At the core of this intention has been making sure that I’m using technology in ways that meet my needs and desires, rather than the other way around.

For example, I’ve been working on approaching my online browsing with more curiosity, such as taking the time to ask myself what I want to explore rather than taking at face value what my ‘For You’ pages tell me to engage with. I’ve also stopped using specific platforms altogether (looking at you, Twitter/’X’) , and have significantly reduced my time on others that feel too present moment-oriented (personally not a fan of Instagram’s shift to stories and reels). Substack’s app has definitely risen to the top of my stack of preferred platforms to engage with, but still in moderation.

And yes, I have overall reduced the amount of time I spend online in the first place, placing more importance on living my life for myself and touching grass. This has reflected my desire to achieve not just a healthy relationship with being online, but also to find a healthy balance of how much time I spend online vs offline.

In curating my online experience, I’ve come to the realization that perhaps there is such a thing as an internet equivalent for fine art vs slop. I think the existence of the internet in our society has reached a level of maturity where it is now clear that there are different ways to engage with it, with some much better for our wellbeing than others. We can also see this on a macro scale in how much the culture of showing up online has evolved from the dot.com era to Web 2.0 and 3.0, to whatever is happening now with Generative AI. There is a plurality in ways to engage with the digital world, and much of it is driven by the ways that the most used platforms are designed.

These shifts are by design, and so we have to remember that technology is not just something that ‘happens’ to us, but something that all of us can play a role in shaping. This reminder is especially present in Afrofuturist thought and speculative fiction, with thinkers such as Octavia Butler leading the way:

As a result, I’ve now shifted my thinking about the internet beyond my own individual habits to wonder: what role can I play in building the kind of society that I would want to live in, both online and offline? I feel a sense of urgency around this question because of the stark underrepresentation of women, people of color, and disabled people working in tech and/or funding tech innovation. We cannot wait for a better world to be built for us. We must play an active role in building the future that we want and need.

With that, I’ve made it a personal goal of mine to not just better curate how I consume, but also make time for creating and building, as I find that these are also key for leading a meaningful life. The silver lining to the technological advancements that we’re seeing unfold is that it has never been easier to build and create. At the same time, it has also never been harder to cut through the noise of the outer world to harness your inner creative. This is the challenge that we all must grapple with and navigate in our journey to fulfilling lives.

Other media to explore on this topic (that I’ve found interesting):

• be your own algorithm by pagemelt (Youtube video)

• how to fall down a curiosity rabbit hole & reconnect to your creativity by Anna Howard (Youtube video/Podcast/Substack: )

• A Few Rules for Predicting the Future by Octavia Butler (essay)

• your phone is the reason you have no identity by jc (substack: )

I step up to the border control booth and hand over my navy blue passport for inspection. After a brief moment of review and the exchange of a few pleasantries, the officer hands back my passport and says, “Welcome back!”

For some reason, those two words stuck with me. It was 2021, I was arriving in Atlanta to start my first full time job after graduating from university. Welcome back? At that point in time, I had spent a grand total of 9% of my life residing in the US, all between the forgettable ages of 0-2. Was I ever really here in the first place?

In technical terms, the border control officer didn’t say anything incorrect. I was born in the US, which by constitutional law makes me a citizen, regardless of my eventual upbringing elsewhere. For most of my life, this has been something that I would take for granted, without ever really being confronted with what it means to be American. As the only US citizen in my immediate family, there were a few moments during childhood that did expose the privileges and challenges that the border control system brings, especially for those of Nigerian heritage. When travelling together, TSA would find a reason to stop everyone in my family except me. One time after arriving in New York, border control detained my mother and brother overnight and left me to meet my uncle. I was four years old, and I didn’t really know my uncle (no offence to him). I was scared. I don’t remember much from this experience other than feeling a kind of fear that I still can’t quite find the words for, over two decades on.

Growing up, my parents would drill into me that I should never take my American citizenship for granted. They would emphasise, “You should always remember there are people out there who would kill to have what you have.” And that may well be true, but if others must be displaced, detained, or murdered so that I can belong… then what am I subscribing to?

I’ve moved around a few times since 2021, spending the most time in the UK. As of late 2025, I’ve found myself back in the US once again after returning for grad school at HBS. Across the many instances of intros and small talk with new classmates, I’d usually introduce myself as Nigerian-British, as that’s how I identify. But then the conversation would inevitably lead to questions about the visa woes that Harvard international students faced in early 2025 after the whole Trump-Harvard fiasco, and so naturally I would then clarify that, believe it or not, I am American. Growing tired of the same song and dance of complicated intros, I spiced things up at one point by introducing myself to someone as being American “on the side.”

Yes, I was being unserious, but the more I think about it, the more this part-time positioning resonates. I would even go so far as to call my relationship with being American as a side hustle, because the truth is if I had all the money that I needed to live the kind of life I want… I wouldn’t choose to be here.

Why?

I don’t know how best to articulate this other than visually:

This all happened on the same day, within the space of three hours.

Synopsis: Shots fired; false alarm. Back to business as usual.

At the time, I remember the main question among classmates being, “Are we still going to take our class photo today as scheduled?” It’s only months later that I’ve found a moment to take a step back and acknowledge: this shouldn’t be normal.

Perhaps that day was only abnormal to me because I didn’t grow up here. But I don’t want to get used to the unease, to repressing complex feelings.

I mean, sure, Harvard ramped up their campus security measures since that incident—all good, right? And what about students in schools that don’t happen to have multi-billion dollar endowments?

Fast forward a few weeks, and I’m in a meeting as part of the editorial team for The Harbus student newspaper. We’re brainstorming article ideas for the next edition, and someone floats the idea of inviting international students to share firsthand perspectives on the instability surrounding immigration in the US. We end up shelving that idea. Why? Because enough international students shared that they don’t feel safe voicing their true views on political issues, that the article most likely wouldn’t be very representative.

To summarize: those without the security of permanent residency don’t feel safe. Those of us with this security also don’t feel safe. So who among us is living in the land of the free, then?

“Would you tell me if you ever felt uncomfortable?” A friend asked.

“Yeah, of course I would.” I lied.

But is it really deception if you’re also lying to yourself?

Ever since I began climbing the rungs of the corporate ladder, I’ve been learning how to do two things at once: 1. how to do the job and 2. how to convey myself to others so they believe in my ability to do the job. It’s only now, almost five years on, that I am starting to realise the ways that the latter shapes me, even when ‘out of office’ mode is on.

I think the mistake I made was to assume that the culture of the place where I spend 40% of my waking hours would not bleed onto me, like fresh tie-dye in laundry. A hard pill to swallow is that over the years I’ve become much more muted in how I express myself, and I see this most prominently in my style of writing now vs when I was a bright-eyed, bushy tailed student. I don’t think it is solely down to becoming more mature. It’s easy to hide behind nuance and be enshrouded in the passive tense, to say things that are hard to disagree with. To punctuate emails with unnecessary exclamation marks, while being numb on the inside. For ‘upward management’ to equate to polite placation, followed swiftly by exasperation expressed in a voice-note to a friend. In short, navigating the corporate world taught me that the goal is to be as non-confrontational and palatable as possible.

So now, when it comes to how I really feel, I speak in riddles — but only when my emotions exceed the permitted range of professionalism. It’s easy to say to someone that you feel excited, but what about when you’re hurt? What happens when you’ve been disrespected, or when you feel let down? I find that in these moments, I run out of words.

This didn’t feel like a sacrifice when the job offers and promotions were rolling in. But now that I’m a student again, I’ve had the privilege of taking a step back and thinking about the kind of life that I actually want. I find myself coming back to my desire to take myself more seriously as a writer, to revive the creative parts of me. Yet in my attempts to write, I struggle to get past half-baked ideas. My notes app is filled with inklings of what I could write about, only to not follow through. My algorithms have caught onto this, and I’ve found myself consuming a lot of content about creativity, as though this could be a substitute for putting the phone down and creating things myself.

It turns out that the cure to this writer’s block did not lie in watching yet another video about ‘the art of self-expression’. I had to learn how to be honest with myself about the way I truly feel. In doing so, I realised that I have not allowed myself many chances to feel in the first place. So here I am, sitting with the uncomfortable truth that I avoid raw emotions like the plague.

Thinking back to periods in my life when I was most prolific in my creativity, it was when I was dealing with such intense emotional experiences that I couldn’t ignore the way I felt. Creativity was self-preservation. But what happens when you’re no longer in crisis mode? When the rawest truths and bitterest pills can be neatly compartmentalized in favour of productivity?

In these times, it becomes clear to me that Marx was onto something when he wrote his theory of alienation. Among the four types of alienation includes ‘the alienation of the worker from themselves or their “species-being”. This refers to what it means to be human: to engage in reflection and consciously create things. With this in mind, it comes as no surprise that this sense of becoming more estranged from my true emotions might well be by design.

On a brighter note, I continue to find refuge in art and its many forms. There is something nourishing about bearing witness to a stranger’s outpouring, and seeing a vision brought to life. This is why I’ve made it my goal this year to immerse myself in sources of creative inspiration. I don’t think that creativity is something I can aspire to just by wishing for it. I think that in becoming more creative, I must also grow bolder and more unapologetic in how I show up to myself and others. This may mean feeling uncomfortable more often. But isn’t feeling how you know that you’re alive?

Fast forward to now, and life kinda just feels like ✨vibes ✨. The expansiveness of possibility usually excites me, but every once in a while I get kept up at night by the feeling that I am just out here, bumbling my way through it all and hoping for the best. And the more that time passes, the more I question what actually is ‘best’ for me. Because when you remove extrinsic measures of success from the equation, how do you know that you are spending your life on the right things? That you’re growing in the right directions? That there aren’t aspects of your life that are being unknowingly neglected? And how do you figure out what you need to figure out in order to truly experience the kind of life you want, not just the kind that seems right from the outside looking in? Put simply: what does it mean to live well?

It’s all so subjective, and this stresses me out just a tad. But I suppose that is also the beauty of it. It’s up to you to decide what matters most to you. To wake up each day seeking to align how you spend your time with what is actually worthy of your time.

Growth is optional, and there are many options.

There are countless directions in which you can grow. You can opt for one, some, or none at all. But let’s just assume that growth is something you want. This leads to the question of: grow how? Some directions lead to results that are much more outwardly and/or immediately visible than others, and these tend to be the valorised the most in our society.

During my first two years after university, I was primarily driven to grow in ways that led to the achievement of extrinsic goals: getting the right job, living in the right city, meeting the right person. I was willing to sacrifice (read: neglect) so many parts of myself just to have these things. But then life happened, and not according to plan. I had to navigate grief for a first and then a second time. Confronted with the reality of mortality, I couldn’t help but wonder: growth is important… but to what end? If I got what I thought I wanted and achieved all the goals I set for myself, would this really lead me to grow into the kind of person that I want to be? Would I even be capable of enjoying the life I had worked so hard to build?

By contrast, I’ve spent the past two years in particular focused on more intrinsic values. In particular, I’ve shifted my priorities to create more space for the kind of things you don’t announce on LinkedIn or brandish on your resume. I became more intentional about doing things that bring me joy and not much else:

• gaming

• trying (and failing) to master recipes

• spending much more time in parks and around nature

• going to art exhibits

• paying closer attention to my nutrition and exercise habits

Less about doing or achieving and more about thinking, feeling, reflecting. Trying my best to live a life that feels like my own and brings me the most satisfaction, even if it involves doing things that aren’t understood/are perplexing to those close to me.

This has done wonders for my mental health. Who’d have thunk it? Treating yourself like a human being kinda slaps.

Growing up isn’t sexy, but it is satisfying.

I must admit that I am prone to romanticising my way through life and thinking about concepts more than concrete stuff. There is not much dopamine to be found in savings accounts and dentist appointments. And with endless entertainment at your fingertips, the temptation to bury your head in the sand is very real. But I think that a hallmark of growing up is simply doing the things that just need to be done. And I’ve found that the peace of mind this brings, the feeling of being on the right track to building the life you desire, while less exciting, is overall much more rewarding than only ever focusing on whatever is entertaining.

Sometimes growing up is about doing everything you can to make sure you’re not standing in your own way. No more procrastinating or waiting for the perfect time to feel motivated to do something that you inherently find boring to do.

Growing up means choosing to grow in the areas that matter most to you.

Perhaps one of my greatest fears is that I look back on my life one day and face the unsettling truth that I dedicated too much time to things that ultimately didn’t matter as much in the end as I thought they did in the moment. Or maybe that I blindly followed a path that I didn’t ever question to determine whether I was pursuing something I actually wanted.

That’s why I think it’s healthy to remind yourself that your life is yours to live. Someone recently gave me the sound advice to never forget that you have agency. So it’s up to you to exert this agency in ways that reflect what you want from your life, not just what you think you should want or pursue.

Of course, the things that matter most to you are subject to change, but as long as you keep these values in mind (instead of getting lost in the noise of external pressures), then I like to imagine that things will work out okay. Even though my physical and socio-emotional trajectory is no longer neatly planned out by an education system, perhaps growing up is about creating your own framework and determining your own milestones. If that’s the case, then I guess that makes life our teacher, and ourselves as responsible for gleaning the lessons that life brings.

Writer’s note & life update

If you had the attention span to make it to the bottom of this - you’re a real one, thanks m8. I wrote most of this post before I moved back to the US to start my MBA at Harvard Business School. It’s been an interesting experience to finish writing something from the other side of a major life transition, but I’d recommend it. Finishing this post has helped me to feel more grounded as I find my feet in a new city and navigating the many demands of an MBA program.

I’m curious to see how the kind of content I write about and the way I write might evolve over the next two years in particular. Feel free to tag along with me in this journey!

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This may well be my most ‘boomer take’, but I have to get this off my chest: I think we as a society might be losing the plot just a tad when it comes to AI. I just think it’s important to admit when the zeitgeist is getting carried away.

I use ‘we’ very loosely here, because the dynamic feels pretty top-down and very much imposed by a particular group (who happen to have vested interests) on everyone else. The generative AI hype train seems to be going off the proverbial rails in its omnipresence, and I’d personally love to see tech bros rein it in.

The current state of things reminds me of that time in 2014 when Apple downloaded U2’s new album onto all Apple users’ phones. I don’t remember anyone having anything positive to say. It was kind of beautiful to see the internet unite in shared haterdom, even if just for a moment.

Can we really put our faith in a market that has deemed boiling the ocean ok because *checks notes* at least a middle schooler could leverage WhatsApp’s in-built Meta AI to minimise time spent doing their homework? Is this really the epitome of human advancement?

There is just something insidious to me about the lethal combo of meticulously designed algorithms that seem to maximise consumption of short-form, digital slop being tastefully paired with the increasing dependence on generative AI to smooth down the friction of doing tasks that involve using any remaining brain cells. The smoothing of this friction might well also be smoothing our cerebral ridges in the process. I just don’t feel that excited about seeing the consequences that these shifts in UI/UX will have on our collective mental faculties as a society down the line.

Yet through the mundane fog of rejecting cookies and circumventing customer service chatbots, an avatar has emerged from the shadows:

My Youtube algorithm has ironically picked up on my mounting technological frustrations and presented this video by Louis Rossman that is steadily gaining virality (as of writing this, it has 2.3 million views in <5 days):

Louis gives several examples of big tech’s pervasive invasion of individual privacy in beefing up their bottom line. He ends with a call to action to change your profile picture to a Clippy (the now defunct mascot for Microsoft’s Office Assistant user interface), because unlike many new tech features and changes, “Clippy just wanted to help”. Unsurprisingly, this resonated a lot with me and, without any hesitation, I changed my Youtube profile picture to pledge allegiance to Mr. Clippy.

My favourite part of the video is the comments section, which has been serving up the kind of Youtube memery that I haven’t seen since Darude - Sandstorm (iykyk).

It does bring me a slither of hope to know that the internet can still be a place where nostalgia mixed with collective exasperation can bring people together.

…could it be that maybe, just maybe, we’re not so cooked after all?

When I was around 6 or 7 years old, I used to get overwhelmed at school and sometimes have meltdowns. I remember a teacher giving me a notebook so that I could have a way of dealing with my intense emotions. I will forever be indebted to her. Because ever since then, writing has been one of the most powerful tools in my life.

In the conventional sense, writing changed my life because much of my academic and professional success is owed to things I have written. I must admit, I do tend to love the things that I not only enjoy but can also get recognition for being good at. What can I say? It’s like a double shot of dopamine.

Anyway, I must emphasise that writing is so much more to me than the outward, material wins it can provide. I love writing because I love the way that writing feels, and how feelings can be channelled and evolved through writing. I love how writing can transform loneliness into meaningful solitude. And I love how reading other people’s writings can remind me that I am not the first person in the world to feel a certain way.

Like any typical love story, my relationship with writing has had its ups and downs. Once I graduated from university, I didn’t want to be near a book for months. When I applied to Cambridge to study social sciences, I thought this would be the best place to challenge myself and push my thinking on topics that I cared about. It did do that to some extent, but at a cost. Most essay-based subjects at Cambridge expect you to write twelve 1500-2000 essays in an 8-week term. That means producing a whole research-backed essay, bibliography and all, every 3-4 days or so. You know, while trying to have a fun uni experience as an 18-year old who just tasted independence for the first time.

In this part of my life, writing became a weighted expectation. It was all about efficiency and deadlines, and not much to do with curiosity and exploration. As a result, my joy of writing dissipated. This was one of the times in my life where I felt most lost, and quite frankly, depressed. My saving grace came from getting the unprecedented opportunity to opt-out of my second-year exams due to the pandemic. During this time of collective isolation, I had the chance to engage with the things that brought me joy when no one was watching or expecting anything from me. And it turned out that my love for writing had never left, it just needed the right conditions to show up.

Sometimes I feel reluctant to admit that I am a writer. That writing is a pretty big part of my identity. That if I were to make an epic montage of all the moments when I felt most zen and ascended into my ‘flow state’, most of these would involve writing essays, poetry, and journal reflections. It’s just not a cool thing to admit, is it?

So alas, writing has been and will always be an extension of myself. Because this is the place where my most audacious dreams and darkest thoughts can make themselves at home.

I think that in life, we all have blindspots. We have things that tend to stay in the back of our minds yet are much more important to us than we like to think they are. For me, writing is definitely one of these things. I’m currently in the process of figuring out how to treat writing as a more central part of my life, because it should be so much more than an afterthought.

So I suppose this love letter serves as a reminder to myself, a plea to try not to lose sight of the things that are always meaningful. The rare category of things that tend to give much more than they take.

To me, being intentional about writing requires a different outlook on what is important in life. To write, you need to create the conditions that nurture creativity. This may mean carving out more moments of solitude, in spaces that feel safe yet stimulating. But writing also requires inspiration, and inspiration comes from things that make you feel alive. So to be intentional about writing is to live more presently and deeply. It means reading more and allowing yourself to be influenced and energised by others’ creativity.

And I think that might be what I love most about writing. You cannot write by accident. There is a certain threshold of dedication and intention that is required to show up as a writer. You have to take the time to reflect and ponder. And in this world of cacophony and rapidly cycling trends, writing is a practice that will always force you to be present.

So in essence, writing is a reflection of how life should be, and a way of getting there.

Earlier this year, I found myself on a park bench in Tokyo, overlooking a pond near the bay. I was on a trip to a country I had been longing to visit since I was 10 years old. I looked out at the water, the sky, the serene. In my journal I wrote:

I’ve run out of dreams.

This reflection has been haunting me ever since. And I’ve been trying to understand why.

Why has dreaming felt out of reach?

At what point did I subconsciously decide that my future only held enough room for practical ambitions and SMART goals?

Why did it have to take a trip to a foreign land to become reacquainted with my deeper desires (or lack thereof)?

After several sporadic sessions of deep pondering, it brings me great displeasure to admit… maybe it really is them damn phones.

Hear me out. I think that dreaming hasn’t felt like an interesting or worthwhile activity to engage in for a very long time. Don’t get me wrong, I stay in my journal. Yet my reflections are almost always based in the past, present or near future.

I think there is a certain level of imagination that dreams demand of us, which in turn requires the desire and ability to entertain distant realities.

But when would I ever be able to think about parallel and potential universes, when my disposable time is double booked with doomscrolling across my beloved blunt rotation of apps?

What do we give up when we trade slowness and boredom for instant dopamine hits? When we never allow our minds enough breathing room to wander and wonder?

Also, just to be clear, this isn’t a tirade against the internet. Far from it, actually. I look back with fondness on countless hours of my childhood spent surfing the web. Ah, the good ol’ days of going down countless Wikipedia rabbit holes and exploring different hashtags and subcultures on tumblr. But there has definitely been a major departure from the golden era when the internet felt like a fun social experiment providing an open world of endless possibilities to explore. There’s just something insidious about being beholden to algorithms designed to lure you into paying attention to what the ‘For You’ page decides is attention-worthy.

As life has been getting busier and busier, I feel pressured to see time not just as a luxury, but also as a currency. The result of this is that I’ve been thinking a lot more about my day-to-day habits, and the things that I spend my time doing (and not doing). With the introduction of features like Screen Time and the rise in ‘digital detox’ content, I’ve been feeling a lot more aware of the time I spend online, and what I get from this time in return. Turns out I don’t really get that much out of it anymore lol. But I do get a lot out of wandering aimlessly through parks, getting lost in a book, and hanging out with friends without any particular objective in mind other than to enjoy each other’s company.

I used to wear the identity of being ‘chronically online’ like a badge of honour. I do take pride in my exquisite curation of memery in my camera roll. These days, I think the opportunity cost of being out of touch with my passions and dreams doesn’t seem quite worth the satisfaction of knowing the latest insider jokes.

To go a step further, the ‘cost’ of spending excessive time online feels very real when understood through the sociological concept of digital labor:

When you remember that the ultimate goal of social media platforms is to profit from your data and track your engagement, it begs the question… who is serving whom?

Idk man, maybe touching grass is a radical act.

follow my future rambles

Unlike previous big moves, this transition has been much more drawn out, with a hefty list of to-dos in preparation for the future coexisting with a wishlist of activities to experience for the first or last time before I go. As I tick my way through both lists, I find the rally between past and future as disconcerting as waving goodbye and hello to two different people at the same time.

I’ve been finding that the in-between can show up in small and (im)practical ways too. I recently checked out a homeware store with a friend, and while she excitedly browsed through the cute decor in search of great finds, I was hit with the pang of pointlessness, knowing that there is no way I would have the space in my suitcase to bring recently accumulated non-essential belongings. And I’m not even that into home decor. But I think it pointed to a deeper sense of antsyness about having to put certain desires on pause, as I wait for the dust to settle before it has even become un-settled.

I can’t think of a better way to describe the unique sensation of being almost-but-not-quite-there than the concept of liminality.

Like many people, I came to know the term through the architectural concept of liminal space. After all, liminal spaces have ascended to meme status in certain corners of the internet. Yet, I find it meaningful to go beyond its usual conceptualisation by applying this concept to those unique moments in life that precede a much anticipated change, which we can call liminal seasons.

There are some parallels that can be made between liminal spaces and liminal seasons. Both are about transition. Both grapple with seeing the in-between as a place that can be perceived in its own right. Yet fundamentally, I see a crucial distinction. Liminal spaces are practical, and serve the function of getting from point A to point B. Would it be fair to see liminal seasons the same way?

I think it is possible that there is something to be gained from embracing liminality instead of seeing these moments as just something to get through. I say this with a great deal of reluctance, as I do sometimes wish I could press the fast-forward button on life, skipping straight to the fun stuff. Yet on further reflection, I wouldn’t want to move into what’s next without feeling grounded in all the lessons and reflections that this current moment of my life has to offer.

So, how can you embrace the liminal seasons of life? Well, I’m not going to pretend that I have all the answers here. There are no ‘top 5 ways to maximise the shareholder value of liminality’ to be found in this post — apologies for any inconvenience caused.

I wonder if that might actually be the purpose of liminal seasons. Not to be guided by clear cut objectives, but to ponder. To simply be. To lean into being present, as a way of bridging what has been to what could be. Maybe it’s the act of being present that sets you up to take advantage of whatever comes next. Because not getting caught up in the ironing out of life admin means that you don’t lose sight of truly living.

As I learn how to be present in the liminal space, what once felt like neither here nor there is evolving into not-quite-there, but here. Since life is short, wouldn’t it be a shame if we missed out on living in the fullness of the in-between?

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I am a big fan of engaging with negative emotions.

I believe that one of the most important indicators of emotional maturity is the ability to critically think about why we feel the way we feel, especially when we feel as though something is wrong.

Yet it seems that social convention with regard to emotions such as fear or sadness is to distract ourselves from whatever could be prompting the emotion. When this isn’t possible or is hard to keep up, we might be advised to “give it time” and essentially wait for the feeling to go away. In the immediate term, the best course of action is supposedly to figure out ways of coping so that the negative emotion doesn’t become debilitating. Of course, I think the adage that “time heals all wounds” has some merit, as it is important to maintain hope that present troubles won’t last forever. At the same time, we can miss out on deepening our understanding of ourselves by interrogating the deeper layers that our concerns are based on.

Let’s take fear as an example. Fears come in many forms, but the fear that I find most suitable for probing is future-focused anxiety: the anticipation of catastrophe, or the sense of impending doom due to uncertainty. When experiencing this kind of fear, you may find yourself asking questions like:

• What happens if things go wrong?

• What if life doesn’t unfold as planned or hoped for?

• What if something bad happens?

• [If something bad has already happened] what if the situation doesn’t improve?

(Sorry if those questions just prompted a mini-existential crisis.)

I think these are important questions worthy of pondering (in moderation). I also think that there is much to be gained from asking meta-questions about these questions. Often times, our future-focused fears may be based on assumptions and underlying beliefs of how we think life should go and how the world should work.

This practice of digging deep to understand the core drivers of your emotions is what I have decided to call ‘emotional troubleshooting’. It is based on the premise that we navigate life with many assumptions about what the future holds and how much agency we do/don’t have over enabling things to go a certain way. Our emotions can give us good intel into our values — a.k.a. the things that we believe are important to have in life and are worth protecting. Seeing emotions as a window into the deeper parts of ourselves therefore means that consistent compartmentalisation is a barrier to our best selves, as it directly stands in the way of learning from what our emotions are telling us. Emotional maturity is about both regulation and reflection, not repression.

Since I am not a licensed therapist, I don’t think it’s my place to give a definitive guide for how to do emotional troubleshooting well. What I can do instead is share what has been helpful based on my personal experiences. To me, I find it helpful to even give a term to this concept, as this enables me to be more intentional in creating space to engage with the deeper aspects of ‘negative’ emotions.

When life is busy and there are countless items to tick off the to-do list, the most convenient option would be to downplay the importance of taking the time to check in my worries and think about the root causes. Yet the fear doesn’t go away. If anything, it looms larger in the darkness. I’ve found that being intentional about troubleshooting my concerns and determining if there is anything tangible I can do to in the near-term to put myself at ease have marked a key shift in being able to navigate life’s uncertainties with a good dose of confidence.

When you think about it, making decisions that are primarily based on the avoidance of uncertainty or discomfort implies that fear is technically in the driver’s seat of your life. Personally, I wouldn’t have that. I like to imagine that there are some things in life that are worth the worry. Understanding our emotions can help us to determine if the choices we make are being driven by feelings in the moment or deeper values — the stuff that makes life meaningful, even when things are hard. Especially when things are hard.

In one of my next posts, I’ll be discussing what it means to shift towards leading a values-driven life. Stay tuned!

If an upcoming meeting, appointment or hangout isn’t in my calendar, it’s simply not happening. My love for self-organisation goes way back: plotting out my very important tasks in a Moleskine bullet journal as a 14-year old (and posting my most aesthetically pleasing entries on tumblr) was the key to my academic success. To this day, I start each year with writing out goals and big milestones for the year ahead, which helps me to identify the steps I should take to get to where I want to be. I don’t want to know where I’d be without these tools that enable me to set intentions and lay out action points for myself. These rituals of self-organisation help me to feel in control and thus less anxious about whatever the future holds. As the saying goes, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

But what if it’s ok sometimes, to “just” wish? To leave space for things to not go to plan, and for these unforeseen circumstances to forge a new path to something great — potentially even better than something you could ever plan for? This question is something I have been reckoning with in recent years, particularly in navigating the transition into adulthood. Being released from the linearity of the education system means becoming subject to seemingly infinite possibilities with indefinite timelines. If you’ve ever played the Game of Life, you might be familiar with the crossroads where you are faced with a choice of which direction to take your plasticky game piece: play it safe or go the risky route?

When I left my first job out of uni much sooner than expected (foregoing a near-guaranteed promotion in the process), I remember experiencing a great deal of anxiety about switching to the ‘risky’ route. I tried my best to focus on the excitement of moving to a new city and working in a field that aligned more closely with my long-term career goals. Yet despite my best efforts and meticulously outlined iCloud to-do lists, I felt scared and vulnerable.

“What if everything goes wrong?” I asked my friend, with tears streaming down my face, “What if all this work to make this change is for nothing?”

Opening up about these fears helped me to realise that my reliance on planning as a means to ease my anxieties is probably a trauma response of some sort. Now before your eyes glaze over at my self-therapizing, let me make an important distinction. There’s nothing inherently wrong with planning; it’s a necessary aspect of being a functioning adult. The problem lies in how these plans can turn into dualistic projections, with value judgments about ourselves or the quality of the lives we’re leading when things don’t go as planned. This might show up in lines of thinking such as, “I should have reached x milestone by now” or “I’m falling behind in achieving y.” These statements often gloss over an unavoidable facet of life: stuff happens! Whether it be extenuating circumstances or personal shortcomings (or both!), it is necessary to be open to the possibility that things may not go to plan. Even better yet, that when things don’t go to plan… this is not an inherently bad thing (more on this in a few paragraphs’ time).

Since choosing the riskier route at my first crossroads, many things strayed from the ‘game plan’. I had to face personal challenges that my very best forecasting wouldn’t have ever been able to predict. Most notably, two very dear people in my life passed away (reflections on this in my very first folusophy post) within 10 months of each other. As a result, my goals and ambitions very quickly fell out of sync with my needs as a human being: to grieve, to feel, to be held. Eventually, it became too obvious that the life I had worked so hard to build simply wasn’t sustainable anymore. No amount of planning or brute force would have been able to change this. More than two years on from this crossroads, I understand now that this sequence of events is not inherently good or bad, it just is. It’s the way that life unfolded, and perhaps the ‘good’ that can be found in this is what I made of my circumstances and how I was eventually able to find a way forward. So then this means that success is less about the ability to materialise the plans that we conjure up, than it is about the paths we forge through combining ideal ends with realistic means.

In more recent times, I have been trying to unlearn my tendency to approach the unexpected with pessimism. I’ve been checking my assumption that anything outside of my control inevitably causes disappointment and so must be contained as a result (through the power of planning and ‘overpreparing’). At the same time, this doesn’t mean going to the other extreme by being delusional with unfettered positivity, either. I suppose it’s about shifting my approach to planning for the future from seeing my life’s trajectory as solely the product of my own actions to instead recognising the role that external factors can play in figuring out the right way forward. It’s about being mindful of the truth that you don’t know what you don’t know, and so it’s ok to figure things out as you go along.

Unlike my previous posts, I’m not sure what Top Three Takeaways can be distilled from these reflections — perhaps this is something I will revisit in the future after more time served in the fiery furnace of life. In the meantime, I’d like to end this post with words that are not my own on this topic, taken from ‘The Story of the Chinese Farmer’, a short fable:

To think beyond myself for a brief moment, I have a feeling that I’m not the only one who gets attached to certain passions or identities. Just look at anything as new as stan culture and online aesthetics (e.g., cottagecore, coquette, e-girl, 'it girl', girlboss) or as everlasting as organised religion and football clubs. Our tastes and preferences are major components of our identities as human beings, and what I find fascinating about them is how our passions can be so core to who we are yet also be subject to change. I don’t know why, but I find that almost contradictory. How can a special interest be so ‘me’ in the present moment that it sparks a deep sense of joy and connection, yet in one year’s time become a faded zeal, a relic of who I once was but no longer am? Is the passion for something really real if it's not lifelong devotion? Why does evolving sometimes feel like a mild betrayal of my former self?

Back to me, myself and my music taste. When I think about some of the driving factors behind my shifts in favourite artists in recent years, I can connect the dots between broader life changes such as moving to a particular city or country and becoming more influenced by the music tied to that context. When I was in New York, I listened to a lot more contemporary jazz while also checking out various jazz clubs. In London, I’ve found myself coming home to my beloved indie/alternative London-based artists. Shortly after seeing a particular artist* perform live for the first time, I found myself connecting with his recent albums on a much deeper level than before. It feels refreshing to perceive the ‘same’ artist’s work in different ways, fuelled by a newfound desire to engage. I used scare quotes in the previous sentence because the truth is: we are all evolving. The artists I once held closely to my heart are changing and creating their new works in response to these life changes, just as I pick and choose who to listen to at any given moment based on the ebbs and flows of my mood and phase of life. At least, that’s what I tell myself so it feels less like a parasocial relationship 😗

From time to time, I see an old tweet resurface about how even two siblings experience their parents in completely different ways. I interpret this as being about how a parent’s style of parenting will evolve between each child, shaped by the lessons learned from raising the first child along with broader life experiences that change them as a person and thus as a parent.

Where am I going with this? I guess the big picture reflection is that we’re all in this interconnected web of storylines, where certain paths cross and run parallel to each other for varying stretches of time (and sometimes forever). Yet even if we find ourselves listening to a particular artist for a brief period, or being in touch with a friend for a season, this collision of worlds is what life is all about. I like to think that regardless of longevity, the impact is what matters most. And what an honour it is to be able to shape and be shaped by others in this collectively individual journey to finding and re-finding our authentic selves. So yes, I am evolving, and that is ok, because that’s what we’re all here to do, right?

Who I’m listening to at the moment (if you care):

• The Loop by Jordan Rakei*

• MUTT by Leon Thomas

• Bad Influence by Ojerime

• Music from Mali, including Fatoumata Diawara and Oumou Sangaré

• Could We Be More by Kokoroko

• Acts of Faith by SAULT

Exactly one month from today, I’ll be turning 25. As I approach this coming-of-age milestone (and prepare to receive my fully developed frontal lobe in the mail), I’ve been thinking a lot about decisions. In particular, it has been sobering to realise how certain decisions that I made over 5 years ago have already had major downstream impacts on my trajectory. Fortunately, these consequences have been mostly positive, but what strikes me is how I really had no idea how much the decisions I was making at the time could shape where my life might go.

I’ll give you one example: when I was 19, I had a burning idea for a social enterprise that I decided to pursue. I just had to find out how far along I could get with turning it into a reality, and I also wanted to take advantage of the resources available to me as a student while I still had access to them. Some of the rewards of this foray into the unknown world of social entrepreneurship became clear in the short term: standing out in recruitment process, receiving awards and recognition, gaining an additional stream of income, etc.

But to this day, over five years later, I still continue to reap the benefits of this decision. I draw from my lived experience as a social entrepreneur in my job on a daily basis. I can’t imagine what my life would look like and how much more would be unclear to me if I had not made the decision to commit to bringing my idea to life over the course of 2 years.

This leads me to my first reflection:

Reflection 1: Commitment provides a stable base for exploration.

By committing to a key area of your life, you are able to explore something on a deeper level that you otherwise may not have the capacity to explore. I think it’s easy to assume that the best way to keep life interesting and exciting is to go from place to place so that you’re constantly adapting to different environments. At least, that’s definitely what I thought when I moved from the UK to the US right after graduated, where I spent a year in Atlanta followed by a year in Brooklyn. With hindsight, a big chunk of this time was spent just adjusting to my change of scenery. This goes beyond just buying furniture and eating off paper plates for a few weeks. It turns out that the small stuff adds up, and takes up time and energy. By this I mean the process of finding the answers to questions like:

• Which neighbourhood should I live in?

• Where do I get my groceries from?

• How do I make friends here?

For personal reasons, I decided to move back home to the UK almost two years ago. As of writing, this is the longest that I’ve stayed put somewhere professionally and personally in my post-uni adult life. Even though I’ve not even been back that long, I can already see the benefits of staying rooted in one place. I’ve been able to focus on building healthy habits, which in turn enable me to live better and enjoy improved mental wellbeing and feel better able to take on more responsibilities in other parts of my life, such as my career.

Committing to a city, job, hobby or side hustle for longer than a year can provide you with the opportunity to witness the evolution of a place beyond the four seasons. Rather than being caught up in the process of adapting to a place, you can start to enjoy observing the intricacies of change over time. It does take time, though. I’ve had many moments of wanderlust, when I’ve wondered whether I could be doing more or something radically different just for the sake of spicing things up. Staying rooted has been showing me the beauty of the ‘mundane’, and helps me to remember the simple things that I can too easily take for granted, such as quality time with family.

Reflection 2: Commitment does not always mean confinement

This may or may not be a hot take, but here goes: commitment does not have to be a trap. Choosing to remain committed to one concrete option over many possibilities can be freeing in that you can focus your energy on making other choices. As a consultant, I can’t help but link this to the concept of dependencies in project management: the idea that there are things that can’t happen unless something else happens first. This may be because the outcome of the first task or decision may guide how you approach the following decision.

In the real world, I’ve come to realise that there are some things in life that become easier to figure out once you’ve narrowed down your options. In committing to exploring one option, you get the snowball effect of being able to more easily make decisions about other parts of your life, like which hobbies to pursue, communities to become a part of, as well as the big stuff like how much to save, and which relationships to cultivate and maintain.

Life is not linear, but it is also not unlike a flowchart. Committing to one choice can in turn enable you to make future decisions more easily. But you have to be willing to move forward by committing to something, so that you don’t stay at the starting point forever.

Reflection 3: Commitment is a task in and of itself

Don’t get me wrong though, commitment can definitely be challenging. The challenge of commitment is twofold: firstly, finding something that is worth committing to, and then choosing to stay committed. Given that I’m only a year and a half into staying at my current job, I’m still working on the latter part, but we’ll get there! Follow-up post in three years’ time, maybe?

Closing thoughts, caveats, and further reading

I hope these reflections have affirmed or enlightened your perception about committing to show up for something.

I had one caveat for this post that I thought is important to acknowledge. Given the continually unpredictable and unstable state of the world, commitment is a privilege. It is one I was not able to enjoy until I had transitioned out of ‘survival mode’, which is definitely another post for another day.

The source of inspiration for this post is the quote at the beginning from the book ‘The Defining Decade’ by psychologist Dr. Meg Jay. I recently discovered the audiobooks section on Spotify and enjoyed listening to this book, so feel free to check it out here.

Long time, no post. Thank you to everyone who reminded me that folusophy exists and sorry for the lack of content over the past year.

(I was busy having a quarter life crisis but that’s a post for another day haha)

The topic of today is how I got the amazing opportunity to go to Italy and cosplay as a diplomat (not the official job description) after being selected to represent the UK as a Youth Delegate to the G7. If you had the pleasure of knowing me between the ages of 16-19 then you’d probably know that working in diplomacy was a dream of mine — until I found out that it would probably take like 20+ years of working my way up the civil service career ladder to get to do the exciting ambassadorial stuff that all the political drama TV shows romanticise. I also realised that I have too many strong political opinions to essentially be a mouthpiece for whichever political party is in power at the time. So you could say that this opportunity has been a happy medium for fulfilling my inner child’s dreams.

What is the Y7?

You may have heard news correspondents talk about the “G7 Summit” with photos of a bunch of people in suits shaking hands for the camera. To quote a reliable source1:

The Group of Seven is an intergovernmental political and economic forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States; additionally, the European Union is a "non-enumerated member”

Every year, one of the G7 countries hosts a summit to bring together the government leaders for a week of photo ops and negotiations about addressing global issues like climate change, trade, and security. 

What the news often fails to capture is the amount of preparation and negotiations that take place in the months leading up to the main G7 summit. Among these things are the G7’s official engagement groups such as the Business7, Women7, Labour7, and of course, the Youth7. The Youth7 (a.k.a. Y7) is the official youth engagement group for the G7. Similarly to the G7, the Y7 hosts its own summit in the host country and brings a selected group of young people for a week of negotiations, resulting in a final document of agreed policy recommendations (known as a communiqué) that is passed on to the G7 for their consideration in the main summit. Italy has the G7 presidency for this year, which is why the Y7 summit took place in Rome.

Why did I apply to be a Y7 delegate?

I had known about the Y7 for a while as I’ve known people in my network who were delegates in previous years, and I thought it seemed like a cool way to meet likeminded nerds young professionals interested in international affairs. I’ve also been thinking about ways to make the most out of my deferral period before I go back to school next year for my MBA, and I saw this opportunity as a great way to develop my team work and negotiation skills — both of which are important components of an MBA degree. And of course, I can’t lie that a week of free food and accommodation in Italy wasn’t another enticing factor!

Each G7 member has its own delegate recruitment process and so I applied via the Future Leaders Network to be in the UK delegation. After submitting my form and being interviewed, I was super excited to find out in February I had been selected to be the UK delegate for the New Skills, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Work track. The policy tracks are different each year based on the priorities of the presidency, and this track happened to align well with my professional experiences in social enterprise and HR, as well as my interest in workforce development policies.

What’s it been like?

First, I had to decide on which policies to propose to my track to be included in the draft communiqué. As a delegate representing the interests of young people in the UK, I couldn’t just come up with stuff off the top of my head; I had to ensure that my proposals were backed by data on what young people consider as their top priorities for government leaders to address. This meant doing a lot of desk research and perusing through research papers, opinion polls, and policy briefs. I also reached out to experts and asked for their recommendations on potential policies. I compiled all my findings in an Airtable spreadsheet, which I used as a reference point in meetings.

From February to May, I attended virtual meetings with my fellow UK delegates as well as informal negotiations with my Future of Work track. I got to present some of my track’s proposals on entrepreneurship in a virtual workshop to get feedback from senior leaders at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the OECD. Countless meetings and Google Doc comments later, we had a draft communiqué ready for final negotiations in Rome. This was something that surprised me about the process: most of the hard work happens in the months leading up to the summit, and the summit itself is a way to engage government officials. 

How was the summit?

To sum it up in three words: fun, intense, and memorable. It was exciting to finally meet people in human form after getting to know them virtually  in our informal negotiations. Many aperol spritzes were consumed, and exquisite espressos fuelled us through jam-packed days of negotiations and cultural activities. One of my personal highlights was getting pizza with some of the UK, US, Italy and Canada delegates, and cracking up endlessly — probably due to the delirium of jet lag and lack of sleep. 

It felt inspiring to be surrounded by young professionals, all at different stages of our careers and trying to figure out whatever comes next. Among us were doctors, undergraduate students, postgrad students, researchers, consultants, accountants, engineers, lawyers and many other vocations. Yet we all came together for the common purpose of finding a way forward for a better future for young people. 

My top three takeaways on negotiation

1. Vagueness is a cop-out; concreteness yields results

The biggest piece of feedback we consistently received from our co-chairs in the communiqué drafting process was that some of our proposals were too vague and sounded like laundry lists. This often happened because we were trying to include as many of people’s ideas as possible between drafts, resulting in paragraphs of solutions that weren’t connected to each other and lacked a strong theme. Since we were only allowed a single A4 page for our track’s proposals, we had to make several hard calls and cut out several proposals in favour of ideas that were priorities across all of the G7 countries and likely to be considered by the G7 leaders. 

We had to strike the balance between being bold in our propositions in order to push the G7 to be more ambitious whilst also being reasonable by building on ideas that have been gaining traction in the policy world. Where appropriate, we incorporated components of the SMART goal framework by adding timeframes (e.g., by 2030), concrete numbers (e.g., 32 hours of training per worker), and naming the types of stakeholders that would be involved in implementing a policy (e.g., the ILO, employers, universities). At the same time, we couldn’t be too concrete as we had to be mindful of the differences in each G7 country’s legal and regulatory systems, and central/decentralised governance structures.

2. Figure out everyone’s red lines (the non-negotiables)

By the end of the summit, I never wanted to hear the question “Is that a red line for you?” ever again. As the negotiations followed a consensus-driven process, it was important for us to find a middle ground when people had conflicting opinions. When a debate on a proposed amendment was becoming a back-and-forth between individuals, we would often ask this question as a way of figuring out if we’d be better off dropping the topic and moving on for the sake of time or if it was worth taking the time to find a compromise. Whilst I do think we used the term to death, I definitely plan on keeping it in my negotiation toolbox for times in the future when I’m trying to ascertain everyone’s top priorities in important meetings.

3. Be mindful of language barriers, loaded words, and cultural nuances

Although the negotiations were entirely conducted in English, English was not a first language for the majority of delegates. I have a lot of respect for my peers who were sitting through hours of nitty gritty discussions about whether to use one synonym over another. There were times that I had to strongly object to the use of a particular word because it had strong political connotations in the UK context. Working in social impact consulting has taught me the importance of inclusive and neutral language, e.g., opting for ‘low and middle income countries’ instead of ‘developing countries’ due to the loaded neocolonial connotations tied to the latter. I also learned a lot about the sensitivities of other countries when they voiced the reasoning behind their red lines and strong objections.

What’s next?

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you may have seen that I got to visit 10 Downing Street to present our final communiqué before the main G7 summit. I’ll still be a Y7 delegate for the rest of 2024, so I’ll be trying to find ways to pressure key leaders in the UK to implement the youth-aligned policies in the G7 communiqué. Please feel free to get in touch if you’re doing work in this space!

That’s all for now. Thanks so much for reading and bearing with me as I get back into writing again. As always, stay tuned :)

Disclaimer: this post is a long one, but for good reason. One year ago today was when my life changed forever, even though I didn’t know it yet. Not until five days later, when I read a text from a friend that someone I knew had tragically passed away. This was one of those moments where you know exactly where you were and what you were doing and how you felt. I was at my desk, working from home, confused. I read the text over and over, trying to make sense of the words on the screen. I saw a familiar name but such a strange combination of words surrounding it:

                “regretfully inform you”
      “passing of”
                                            “motor accident”
“post-surgery complications”
                                                           “Funeral arrangements”

Just like that, piecing together the puzzle of fifty-five words in total shattered my understanding of present reality. My friend, my long-time childhood friend, my friend who lived less than a 10 minutes’ walk away from me, the very last friend that I met up with before I uprooted my life and moved country, my friend whose laughter is larger than life… is dead?

This was the first time I have had to grieve the passing of a loved one who was close to me. I suddenly found myself starting an emotional journey that I never signed up for but had no choice but to embark on so that I would not be consumed by the pain of knowing that I have run out of time. The truth is that there is no time left to see my friend again, to hear her laugh once more, to share old memories while creating new ones together. Time’s up. But of course, I wasn’t even close to being ready for the time to end. 

So I needed time to myself to process this excruciatingly hard truth. I took time off from work, with thanks to my supportive and understanding managers, and having a job that enabled flexibility (— speaking of which, remind me to write a post on the negative effects of capitalist hustle culture on living a fulfilling life). I told my family and some of my closest friends the news so that they were in the loop. And then I cried. A lot. I cried until I physically could not bring myself to cry anymore, which is probably not something I had done since I was a child. After crying and crying, I eventually felt ready to start doing other things. I took a walk and got myself a frappe. I played Mario Kart on my Nintendo Switch for the first time in ages, because it reminded me of all the times my friend and I would play Mario Kart Wii (ah, what a golden era that was). I journalled. I even wrote a poem for the first time in over a year. It turned out that grieving gave me new reasons to engage with certain pastimes that had not interested me in a while. The grieving process catalyzed changes in me to help me face the truth that nothing will ever be the same, including myself. I will not be the same, and that is ok.

The truth is, there is a void when you lose someone you love. My favourite writer bell hooks said, “Whenever we give up something, there is a gap—even if what we are giving up needs to go.” But it doesn’t have to stay empty. We have to find healthy ways to fill this gap through continuing to show love to and be loved by those around us. Given that we are all likely to go through grief at various points in our lives, it’s extremely important to know how to process grief in healthy ways. There are many ways to deal with it, but not all of them are healthy. Some will make you worse off. Not knowing how to handle grief well can even lead to a premature death, and/or limit your ability to enjoy life to the fullest (which some philosophers might say is the same as dying anyway). Below are some lessons I have learned about grieving well:

Grief has given me the courage to love fully. It has challenged my pride and ego, and humbled me with the reminder that we do not have all the time in the world, therefore we should not take life for granted. Grief challenges me to take the love I have for those who are not with me, and channel it in new ways. I’ve found solace in tapping into my artistic side more: e.g., listening to music and gaining a new appreciation for certain songs and artists, sketching portraits of loved ones, writing poetry, journaling, and writing this very post. 

Grief has changed me, but it has been for the better. I try to check in with friends and family more. For those of us who are grieving the loss of the same person, I’ve noticed a mutual desire to check in with each other more intentionally. Reflecting on what my friend Antonia means to me has transformed how I see friendship, because now I truly appreciate the power of platonic love. My friendship with Antonia was one of the first spaces where I felt safe to be my full, authentic self. Grief continues to guide my approach to navigating friendships as an adult working full-time in that I seek to build and maintain friendships that are mutually meaningful. I refuse to take fulfilling friendships for granted. I try to tell my closest friends that I love them more often, which hasn’t been something that has come naturally to me in the past. But now I know that it is important to me to make sure my friends know that I deeply appreciate our friendship, and to show them the love that I have for them while I can. Grief also gives me the courage to create distance from connections that are no longer mutually beneficial, in order to clear space for those that are. I am no longer held back by the fear of grieving and accepting what a relationship once was but no longer is.

We should all learn how to grieve, because grief is an inherent part of life. Death is one of the most intense catalysts for grief, but we experience grief in other ways throughout life (e.g., breakups, rejection from a person or opportunity, trauma — the effects of any experience that pushes you to change the way you see the world and yourself). In simple terms, grief is the process of letting go and finding a way forward through the loss. I do not see grief as something to live in spite of. We live through grief because it is a natural process that you can’t shortcut your way around. I mean, you can try, but I’m pretty sure it won’t end well for you. So I’d recommend saving yourself the trouble.

Grief can be a catalyst for change. I made a career change much earlier than I thought I would because I knew I wanted to do work that I found meaningful. Now that I understood the importance of making the most out of life while I am still alive, I couldn’t allow myself to wait for a more ‘convenient’ time to pivot. In my job interviews when they would ask me why I am looking to change roles, I chose to be honest and vulnerable by explaining that grief was one of my biggest driving factors. I like to imagine that they valued my honest vulnerability because I ended up receiving offers from all the places that I interviewed for. Now I do work that aligns more with my deepest values, and I am so grateful to have been able to channel my grief into creating a better life for both myself and others.

Life is short, but this does not mean it must be short lived. We can make the most out of life by focusing on what is meaningful. As we do this, we should not ignore the power of grief (when processed in healthy ways) to help us live well. Grieving through life can show us the way back to our deepest desires. Engaging with these desires can help us to see that there is a way forward. I believe that the only way to live through grief and not become consumed by it is to love. Love yourself, love those who are no longer alive, and love those who are still here. 

I dedicate this post to my beloved friend, Antonia, to my beloved grandma, and to anyone who is on the journey of grieving through life. I hope you find your way.

Resources that have been helpful to me in navigating grief (this is not sponsored): 

• Therapy: because it’s just as important to get the right professional support for your mental health like you would for your physical health

• Journalling: a great way to get your thoughts out of your head and onto some paper. I like reading out loud what I’ve written because it helps me make new connections and better understand why I feel the way I feel

• Talking to others, especially those who have experienced grief

• The Homecoming Podcast with Dr. Thema. These episodes may be especially helpful:

  • Episode #88: Grieving the loss of a loved one

  • Episode #142: Supporting Grieving Friends

  • Episode #120: Change and Life Transitions

• Grief comes in waves: a viral post by reddit user GSnow about the grieving process

• The song ‘How Many Years’ by Yebba is a beautiful and vulnerable reflection on her experiences with grieving the loss of her mother

• Last, but not least, I present to you the song ‘Homebody’ by Nai Palm. I fell in love with this song when I heard it for the first time in 2019 at a very special solo concert she held in London. If you really want to get into your feelings, I would recommend that you find a comfortable and quiet spot, put on some headphones, close your eyes, and listen. Don’t just listen to the song; listen to your heart.