There is something sacred, almost rebellious, about men gathering without performance, masks, or the pressure to impress. Not to posture. Not to compete. Not to prove masculinity. But to be . That was the spirit of our recent men’s meetup, set against the calm, idyllic backdrop of a dam outside Nairobi. Jet skis, boats, open skies, and a break from the city’s noise. A reminder that men, too, need space, both externally and internally. Ironically, I arrived late. Not because I didn’t care, but because I was learning to let go. For a year, I had carried the vision of these gatherings almost alone. I had pushed, planned, persuaded, hustled, and overperformed. By November, I was exhausted, drained, and quietly resentful. I asked for a hiatus — not because the mission wasn’t worth it, but because my nervous system was collapsing under the weight of trying to prove myself . That realization changed everything. The Hidden Emotional Weight of Leadership Leading a cause often feels ...
I grew up in a strict Seventh-day Adventist household. Saturday was holy, quiet, serious, and structured. In the early 90s, when I was ten years old, I had one consistent spiritual gift: arriving late. Not because I hated church, but because I loved space. Or more precisely, I loved Star Trek: The Next Generation — those weekly adventures of Jean-Luc Picard and his crew, exploring strange civilizations that somehow taught me more about human nature than any lecture could. In the series, you had alien races like ‘the Borg’— obsessed with assimilation, turning identity into a factory line. You had ‘the Ferengi’— where everything was about profit and bargaining, even breathing felt negotiable. And you had ‘Q’— this omnipotent troublemaker who kept putting humanity on trial. Every “alien” was a mirror. And many evenings after the house settled, I would look at the sky and wonder: What is the next frontier of human imagination? Here’s the cosmic truth: light from many stars ta...