“🎶…every tear I’ve cried, you hold in your hand, you never left my side. Though my heart is torn, I will praise you in this storm”🎶. This was my song all week, especially the version by Natalie Grant. This week, I am learning a lot about praise and acknowledging your pain while you praise. People seem to think you only praise when the pain is gone, but there’s been a consistent pattern of people praising in pain in the Bible and it’s such a game-changer as it allows you to move quickly from your pain while also opening your heart up for help.
Digress A
The best way to spot an idiot is by looking for the cruel person. When you see someone who does not look like you or act like you, the human’s instinctive reaction is to be cruel through fear or judgement or both but never kindness. Empathy and compassion are one of the secrets of a higher life and not enough people practice it. The very best people among us operate at a level of kindness that seems foolish to lower humans. The kindest person in the room is often the smartest. Kindness is something I have spoken about severally in my Bedsides, it’s a superpower. JB Pritzker said it better than I could have in this video.
Henry Kissinger died this week and much of the commentary has been about how wicked he was and how people were shocked he lived this long. While this is not a comment about his perceived wickedness or diplomacy skills, you can read all about it here and here. I am quite intrigued about how Kissinger turned it around. He came to America as a German fleeing from persecution with his family, how does an immigrant with such a storied background come to a land that isn’t his and make something out of it such that he played such an important role in the country’s politics? I am pretty sure that if not for the “natural birth” rule, Kissinger would have been a serious candidate for President at some point. America remains the land of opportunity and the gift that keeps on giving.
The way it works is that I love Yuval so anything he writes, I read. So I came across this piece he wrote early this year about Artificial Intelligence and I think it’s worth a read especially with AI making the news this past week. Yuval is a conundrum of sorts for me but what I love about him is the boldness of his thoughts and ideas and he is not afraid to put pen to paper on them, it forces you to think.
I read some really good articles this week, this one by Fu’ad chronicling the early days of Paystack, which has become a huge success story out of the Nigerian tech ecosystem is something that should be read. The thing about Paystack that people do not realise is that so many people’s lives were changed for good first by the really good salaries Paystack paid its staff and then by the huge windfall when they got acquired by Stripe. It’s the first major exit from the Nigerian tech ecosystem and so many of them have gone on to build great things with that windfall.
Digress B
What is the purpose of the United Nations? I genuinely struggle to see the point, they were not able to stop the Russian aggression in Ukraine, and haven’t moved the needle in all of the African conflicts. I can’t point to a single win from the UN. Yet, COP28 is happening this week and global leaders are gathered to talk about Climate Action but we all know the UN does not have the muscle or ability to push countries to action and when countries flout these rules, nothing happens. The United States, Russia and China do what they want, UN or no UN. I genuinely don’t think COP28 will make any difference, it’s UNGA all over again. Why not merge the COP sessions with UNGA and save the planet from unnecessarily long flights that pollute our environment even further? Of course, I am not the only one who thinks this way, read this and this, and also this which argues in favour of it.
I never thought the Cybertruck was going to be delivered this year. I had told a couple of my friends that Elon was not going to meet the October timeline and that the truck would face more delays. The delays were because they were trying to do something different and it proved difficult. I am happy to swallow the humble pie as the Cybertruck shipped this week. The Cybertruck is a Business School case study because it shows you what the human mind can build without bureaucracy. The thing is, the organizations with the capacity and tools to allow innovative creations have been bogged by bureaucracy. Only Elon could have built a car like that, it’s an amazing car purely for the effort to try and do something different.
Did you know that the Kennedys are America’s unofficial royal family? I never thought about that this way until this week. It is so tragic that JFK’s only son died in a plane crash that he steered himself. The original Kennedy had nine children and none is alive today. Five died either by assassination or in a plane crash. And just like Kissinger, this influential American family only moved to the US from Ireland in the late 1800s. And like the Odukoyas, they have faced so much tragedy despite the success they have had but they keep pushing.
Always True!
Miracle Roch.