Rethinking Die Empty

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Mindful partners, I helo.
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I thought that after that heavy episode about Absalom that I dropped last week, I should just be a proper Nigerian.
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I say Aylow.
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And if you're not Nigerian, um I hilo is uh a balance for a colloquial palence for how are you doing.
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The interesting thing about hailing is much like shalom.
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Well, that's the original intent of ILO, or more appropriately, a complete check-in.
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And the response is usually I hail back.
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Why?
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And I can imagine you hailing back too.
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But let me let me get to the bottom of this.
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Why?
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Inal Carrie's uh funny social responsibility that has evolved it from a greeting of sincere concern to Harry a tone of do you have anything to give me?
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Or if you're on the road, wait till you carry.
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Only a Nigerian can understand that, and I honestly don't know how to explain it.
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I am not even judging because language is so fluid, and you know the language is my love language, yeah.
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It's so fluid that the word that ones um stem series can become so colloquial, it completely gets lost in how a particular generation is engaging that word.
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The other day I was asking when talking with my son actually, and we were talking about other streams of income, and he said side quest.
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I'm like, are we in the same conversation?
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I know side gig.
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Columbus surprised when they said exactly, we're saying the same thing.
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Oh, what has this got to do with the monodial?
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Every generation, no matter how they cling they were more chill than the generation after them, there's always this need to want to prove themselves as being more capable than the generation before them, sometimes even wiser.
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And I'm not raining on that, I'm not reigning on that at all.
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I'm just saying every generation has the hustle code, and I speak side gig, my 15-year-old speaks side quest.
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Oh god, a godima, yes, that's the one, yeah.
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All is well, we will be everything will be well.
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Uh we are all looking for more than one stream of income, even though up on steel, there are still some hustle palances that make me pull my hair.
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Like, I am literally scratching my head as I if you could see the bloopers, I'm literally scratching my head, screaming inside while pretending to understand with a straight face, of course, or the appropriate acceptable social cues.
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And one of such is what I would try to explain today, explore today, while walking with another you guessed it, character, of course.
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The hustle aphorism, die empty.
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The historical walk partner, Samson.
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I can literally feel your excitement from your listening device, Samson.
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What about Samson buying to your lawn and dying empty?
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Ah, stay with me and find out.
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We get to that point um and invite our body and mind to arrive for this episode.
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Remember, you can share your thoughts on any of the episodes that resonates with you via the link at the top of the show notes that says send us a fan mail or via at mindfully with Tumishi on Instagram stm.
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Alright, thank you.
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Now, let's invite the body and mind.
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And if you're in an environment where you can close your eyes, too.
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If you're driving, just breathe through.
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It's not me she that told you to close your eyes.
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Invite the vision you had as a child.
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Whether you're driving or you're closing your eyes, if you're in a safe place, just close your eyes and invite that vision you had as a child of who and what you would be when you grew up.
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Got it.
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Whether you are living in or not, hold that picture, just hold it, breathe through it.
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Now may I invite you to give a huge sigh out, acknowledging the work that got you here.
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If you're not there yet, hold that picture still.
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Acknowledge how far you have come.
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Side out and gently let your shoulders drop like you're dropping a weight.
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Let's continue.
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First, let me see if you had a picture of who and what you would be when you'd grow up.
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Ah, you are amongst the privileged people I was talking about.
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Like I talked about the last episode.
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Ah, I had no idea what I was going to be, who I was gonna be.
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So when we did this exercise, the only picture that came to my mind that I can remember is me rolling bread.
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Yes, maybe I was supposed to be a becker, right?
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Uh no, not maybe not a chef, but baking bread.
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That's just so that's the only picture that came to me.
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Oh my goodness.
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It's Ben Oakry that once said, adversity wakes us up.
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It reminds us not of who we think we are in our vanity, but who we really are in our simplicity.
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Then Ben Wendell, uh, an Australian pastor, adds, if you remove the shadows from your story, you remove the death.
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I think the sagacity of these two people from different races, Ben Oakri is Nigerian, by the way, is in their name because Ben Okri, Benwendel.
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And for me, Samson is a cross between Sophaku's Odipus Rex and Nassus, and you are not familiar with Odipus.
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Um ever read Olaro to me's The God to Not to Bling?
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Uh-huh.
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Yes.
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Other box the gods and not to bling is the adaptation of Odipot's Rex.
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I shouldn't let me let me farm small.
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Professor Olaru to me did teach me in university and it was an absolutely amazing lecture.
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So, in a very short oversimplification of the God Not to Blame, aka Ottopus Rex, Odawali is the tragic hero who unwittingly fulfills a prophecy that he could kill his father and marry his mother, bringing disaster to his family and kingdom.
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When I first read that story, I was interested in the tragedy, of course.
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But yes later, I found myself asking different questions.
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Who knew what?
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What who made the decisions around him?
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If they had that information, why was it withheld from him?
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And what happens to a person when the story of their own life is being written around them while they have written it or why they are living it.
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I hope this adage is correct.
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And that least translates as your destiny has no medicine to cure your experiences, your head is literally the judge of your existence.
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Maybe destiny is not the same thing as exemption from consequences.
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Remember, we're still working towards a fight for life, 2026, and I'm using male characters now.
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Not to shame at all, not to judge, just to be such lights in to probably understanding the way our minds work.
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Notice I said our minds.
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Perhaps knowing that something is written does not remove the human being who has lived through it.
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So I'm a slow starter.
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Someone said I'm a slow swimmer.
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I just heard that.
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If you're on Tumblr, you can still find it there.
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And one line I wrote then was robbed of the past, you will settle for any future.
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And that is part of my story.
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Personal story.
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Again, no war, no personal war stories of Tomishe today.
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I was fascinated by the possibility that we can make judgments about people's choices without always asking what they knew when they made them.
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I felt a lot of compassion for Edewali, I am telling you.
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And I am not saying I felt that compassion because I thought he was blameless, but because I thought we had been unfair to him by reducing him to a tragic flaw, his anger, his mistakes, his consequences.
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And I think that question has followed me.
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It has followed me, and it just went to the um back burner of my mind because I'm here what 12 years later, still thinking about um tragic flaws about how we can live mindfully and engage our emotions because they're not bad, we just need to engage them better.
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Uh, and I'm working with another very tragic figure, Samson.
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From the little research I did while writing this episode, um, his name is associated with the sun.
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So it is not totally surprising that his superpower was extreme and supernatural, supernatural strengths.
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I'm excited.
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Being in a 40-degree ray of sunshine and the humidity is horrible.
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Yes, that is how I have reimagined Samson's strengths.
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So, is God really to blame for his character flaw?
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Or his parents.
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Then I'm reading it again and I'm saying, oh, I have to be fair to the parents.
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They did ask God how they should raise him.
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So, before Samson was born, they were given instructions how his mother should leave, what should be avoided, how the child should be dedicated.
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His head was not supposed to be touched by a razor, hence, being a Nazirite, and probably why I still have my dadred dedicated to God from the womb.
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And the angel tells his parents that he will begin delivering Israel from the hands of the Philistines.
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I don't know how old he was when he began to fight for Israel against the Philistines, but at least, at least, because it's these ancient times, let's say 15.
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So, the question then is is it God, his parents, his choices, or was he destined to die that way?
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Trust me, I have so many or in the story.
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But let's keep at how does it tie to dying empty?
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Because something had one job.
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Yeah, if I had those kind of rules, I'm just saying, with the gift of hindsight or what I know now, if I had those kind of rules about how I should leave very clear boundaries, very clear instructions and assignment, would we then say he died empty?
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A blind man with a gift of hindsight?
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Asking God to strengthen him just one more time before dying with his captors.
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This might come off as oversimplifying a huge historical figure, but hear me out.
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Just hear me out.
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I actually am not a fan of use all your gifts before you die.
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As how no?
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Ignore Samson that had only one obvious gift with proper pre-existent guidelines, still couldn't manage that one.
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Nope.
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I am not excusing Samson's character flaws.
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He was cold, he was gifted, he was impulsive, he made choices and suffered the consequences.
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Boom, that's life.
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He harmed people, people harmed him, he was powerful and was vulnerable, and then and when hindsight finally arrived in a way that could no longer be ignored, what did he do with the agency he still had?
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Because unlike Odewale, who for much of his tragedy did not know the full story of his own life, Samson eventually knew enough.
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He knew what had been lost, he knew what his choices had cost, he knew he was blind, and he still had one choice left.
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But even that choice wasn't uncomplicated.
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He asked God to strengthen him once more, and he asked for revenge.
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So, what exactly do we call that?
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Redemption, revenge, agency, uh final act of purpose?
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Maybe it is some uncomfortable combination of all four.
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And this trajectory is one we love to hate and hate to love, then distance ourselves from oh yeah.
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Who decides what dying entity should look like?
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Who looks like if my personal life premise is right, it works for me that life is lived in the transitions.
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How do you then know of the fool before your ending?
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One of the things that I was told as a young broadcast journalist was and presenter was you are a jack of all trades and master of all.
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And at the time it was a thing of bright flex that I could host a range of radio format shows presenting English and Yoruba.
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Yes, I used to present in Yoruba, and yes, I presented Islamic programs too.
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Fun fact my first presentation gig, October 1, 2021, was as a sports presenter.
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So which of these am I leaving fully and will empty at the end?
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You see why that question is doing me.
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Which one exactly am I supposed to empty?
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Because I'm not gonna lie to you, when you're researching for any show, you're literally, that's if you're doing it right, you're literally in the middle of whatever profession you're trying to present.
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I'm not saying don't give your oil because you have to give your all it, whatever it is you're doing, focus on all the things, motivational speakers and um entrepreneurs and all of those people say to us, please give your all.
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But when you're uh ping ping on all gift cylinders because you want to die empty?
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What if the question we're all grappling with is when life has not gone the way you imagined, what do you do with what is left?
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Or does hindsight only exist to make us regret, or can it offer us one more opportunity to choose?
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If you think I have an answer for this, Lorira, I don't because if we were all the same, the world will be boring, to be honest.
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There will be people who will find all their gifts and die empty.
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Yeah, there will be people like that.
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I'm not even going to find.
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And there are people like me still looking for the fool that we can empty, and all of us can survive in that reality without shitting on each other and reigning on each other's or one another's spirit.
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In 2022, just two years after I had left mainstream media, when I started to grapple with the reality of not dying empty, or whether I had left radio too early, and um, did I leave in radio and start just start writing my books?
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Um, was that enough?
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You know, honestly.
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That question, and and whether I was even ever going to start a podcast, and what would I call the podcast?
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Everything was just um at best murky waters, and I didn't know um what I was going to do, but unfortunately, or is it fortunately that year there was a lot of die empty uh social media reels that made me write a note, and I'm going to share that notes with you now, and probably that's where we're going to wrap up today's episode because uh yeah, fill in the gap, and here's what I wrote an uncomfortable reality.
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Not all of us will be great, all of us can make impact if we desire.
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Why we have been socially conditioned to define greatness as being influential on a large scale or being mirrored on the world stage.
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True is not all of us we get to that perceived phenomenal status.
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For some, actually, it is after they have transitioned that their greatness will be understood.
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Impact too may not be global or televised.
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Impact can be that 500 naira worth$50 you give someone who you don't know, and it literally saves them for that moment.
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But you somehow knew and gave to.
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Go be the best of the authentic you you can be.
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Who knows?
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In just putting one foot in front of another, you will meet greatness on the way.
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It's in the little things.
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I can't believe I wrote that, and it just took me back to 2020, and I'm looking at the journey I'm on now, and I'm wondering whether I'm gonna ask somebody to put my hands on the pillars, but I don't have enemies to kill, so I use glasses for nobody to kill, or blind or you know where I'm going to.
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I'm grateful that I'm not a tragic floor, but the truth is the essence of the the story of Odewale and Ottopas um Rex is to say that we are all flawed as humans, and um there are some things about us on this side of eternity, whether you're Christian, you're Muslim, you are an additional worshipper, um, however you connect with the higher power, there is something there is something that is making or someone that is behind certain decisions, no matter how you think you have everything in order, life may just happen, and dying empty then becomes a mirage.
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Thank you for sticking with me today.
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And as I rind uh that's a rhymed, I'm not even going to wait at that.
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As I round off this episode, I have a favor to ask you.
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I would love for you to please follow, rate, and share this episode where that is that you're listening to Mindfruit Team She and indeed the whole show.
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Um, it helps us recruit more soldiers into this army of the healed, one person and a story at a time.
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I will appreciate if you do that for me.
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And then, of course, it gives us a little bit more visibility.
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That is what I meant by us recruiting more soldiers.
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So, thank you for that.
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Always a huge thank you to Ulu Atobi.
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Uh, that makes creating and getting the stories to you very easy and fun.
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You guys have no idea.
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So, love yourself, love your neighbor, love your country.
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Above all of this, love God.
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He is the essence of your being.
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I am Ulu Watsumishi.
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Or ladako.
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Stay mindful.