Candid Conversations Newsletter: From Inheritance to Intention

“Change doesn’t live in silence or noise alone. It lives in the space where wisdom is made loud and truth is made legible”

I have a few cities I’m particularly fond of. Toronto is by far one of them.

There’s something about it, maybe the people, maybe the pace, but it holds deep meaning for me. I’ve formed strong relationships across the GTA, and I’m usually there a few times a year. When I visit any city, I let friends know I’m around. If time allows, we link up. This trip was no different.

Brunch, Kind Of 🍳

I was meeting a friend I hadn’t seen in a few years. He picked the spot, some trendy brunch place with oversized windows and minimalist furniture that probably cost too much to be that uncomfortable.

The food? It was fine. Not bad, but nothing special. I tend to prefer little cafes, quiet corners where the coffee tastes like someone actually cared, and the menu doesn’t read like an interior designer wrote it. This place leaned heavy on décor, light on flavor.

We’d met years ago while working at a holding firm, both of us navigating early career moves with equal parts ambition and quiet confusion. It wasn’t the kind of place built for friendship, but we found one anyway. Maybe because we were both asking similar questions, even if we came from different starting points.

We started with the usual pleasantries, the kind that feel like checking off boxes but somehow still matter. He’s married now, and I’m not. Funny how that flipped. When we first met, I was the one figuring out domestic life, and he was wandering around in his singlehood trying to make sense of things.

He’s older than me. Always has been a little more… steady. Thoughtful, even when he says nothing. Back then, he didn’t drink. Raised in a Muslim household, eldest son. You could feel the expectations hanging on him — culture, religion, family. The whole invisible load. And yet he always moved with quiet questions, not loud rebellion. Like someone trying to make peace with what he inherited without throwing it all away.

Time as Teacher ⌛

Time passed, as it does. Life kept unfolding in ways neither of us fully expected.

Some contradictions softened. Others stayed sharp, just took new shapes. I used to think growth meant clarity. Now I think it just means learning to carry the mess with a little more grace, or maybe just a little less panic. 

We talked on the walk toward the metro, one of those easy, open-ended walks where time feels slow but charged. Conversation stretched out. We got into the heavies: cultural responsibility, how much of what we carry is really ours, and how much was just handed to us with a “Don’t drop this” taped on top.

He had studied at an HBCU in the South. I had come from a small island, raised on big dreams and tight resources. Confidence was kind of an unofficial language where I grew up. We didn’t have much, but we had belief. That was supposed to be enough.

There are layers to all this. We show up in the world shaped by more than what people see. The immigrant experience has a thousand versions, and none of them come with a glossary. You just live it. Figure it out. Hope you land somewhere solid.

What If They Spoke? 🗣️

Sometimes I picture Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois sitting across from each other. Maybe in a room full of books. Maybe over a stiff drink neither of them admits to needing.

Would they argue? Probably. Would there be respect? I like to think so.

They were chasing the same thing: liberation, dignity, a future bigger than survival. But their maps didn’t line up.

Garvey spoke to the hearts. Du Bois to the minds.

Their methods were different, but the mission? That was shared.

I wonder what might’ve happened if they’d actually leaned into the friction instead of letting it harden into division. If ego hadn’t gotten in the way. If difference wasn’t seen as a threat, but a chance to build something richer.

We do this all the time. Miss the intersection because we’re too busy proving we belong in the lane.

Mentorship has that same danger. It can’t be about hierarchy or heroics. It works best when it’s rooted in curiosity, in openness. When it says: I don’t have all the answers either, but I’ll walk with you for a while.

A Different Kind of Strength 🏋🏾‍♂️

I’ve been thinking about mentorship differently lately. Not the polished kind you put on LinkedIn, but the kind that feels like someone showing up for you when they don’t have to. The kind that doesn’t ask for receipts.

It’s easy to grow up thinking strength means doing it all yourself. That’s how most of us were raised, especially if you come from a community where resources were thin but expectations were thick.

But mentorship? Real mentorship? That’s a different kind of strength. It says, you’re not supposed to carry this alone. It says, you’re not crazy for doubting yourself. I’ve been there too.

Not everyone gets that. And the truth is, the people most skeptical of us are often the least examined themselves. They don’t know your context, your roots, your grind. But they’ll question your presence anyway.

Still, when you find someone who sees you clearly, without the preamble or the filter, it sticks with you. It shapes you. Maybe it even saves you a little.

Garvey x Du Bois (Reimagined) 🎞️

I come back to that imagined Garvey and Du Bois conversation a lot.

Not to idolize it. But because it reminds me how much we lose when we don’t sit long enough to understand where someone else is coming from.

They both wanted a future where Black people weren’t just surviving, but thriving. Self-determined. Sovereign. Whole.

Different strategies, same fire.

What if they had sat longer with their differences? Not to erase them, but to learn from them. That place between the bullhorn and the bookshelf, that’s where change lives.

Mentorship lives there too. It asks us to show up, not as experts, but as people still figuring it out. Still listening. Still willing to be changed by someone else’s version of the truth.

From Inheritance to Intention 📦🚶🏾‍♂️‍➡️

Later that afternoon, we ended up in Yonge-Dundas Square, surrounded by noise and screens and people moving too fast. Still, somehow, we were in our own little bubble.

Talking about identity. Belonging. All the quiet conflicts that don’t get named in the group chat.

We talked about how the past keeps tugging at us, even while we’re sprinting toward the future. About how responsibility sneaks up on you before you feel remotely ready.

But at some point, you stop waiting for permission and just… start.

You realize no one’s going to fix this for you. That maybe the whole point is to be the one planting seeds. Even if you won’t be around for the fruit. Even if all you leave behind is a slightly better question.

We don’t get to choose our inheritance. But we do get to choose what we build from it.

And maybe that’s where freedom starts, not in walking away, but in walking forward with your eyes open.

If this resonates with you, even quietly, do me a small favor — consider sharing it with someone who might feel the same.