The One With The Two — Mo! & Doc Ayomide
On Being Friends Across Space & Time
The best friends to talk with are those friends that you agree enough that you can talk endlessly but you disagree enough that you can debate forever — Doc Ayomide (he heard it from another friend)
Today is officially my first episode with my very good friend and co-host, Doc Ayomide, and we are talking about friendships. Doc Ayomide has been a friend throughout the years, and it’s great to have him on the show and, of course, here. Ayomide isn’t new here, as he has been twice — first to talk about our friendship and mutual love for CS Lewis and techy stuff and my experience with a Korean fringe church, aka cult.
Ayomide is a medical doctor, psychiatrist, and writer and has been my friend since 2004 — eighteen years to be precise! My first memory of him would be at the Christian Fellowship Group (CFG) on campus. We would always chat after fellowship with a few others, and the more we talked, the more I realized I had a lot of things in common with him — C.S Lewis and more… and even when I went through an existential crisis at one point in my life, he was the one person I knew I could talk to. Ayomide is quite thoughtful and that friend who gives judgment in a loving way. He has informed my creative process, especially on mental health and critical thinking.
In this episode, we shared about best friendships generally, our thoughts on them, using our own friendship as a case study, of course. Best friendships do not need to be mutual most of the time, and there shouldn’t be any rules. Sometimes we find out that people like us and don’t really like them to ‘that degree.’ “When most people say this person is my “best friend,” they mean they can tell them anything and everything, and both friends have their lives intertwined,” Doc Ayomide says. And yeah, he says I’m the best in that category *swoons*
Being in different locations many times in our friendship, we can say technology, the internet (and me, of course ) helped keep our bond stronger through the years. Of course, we definitely had our “silent years,” but we always had that our perfunctory new year phone call to catch up on the past year, future goals, and current state of events.
It’ll also be interesting to note that I saw Ayomide last in 2011, 11 years ago at Ibadan! It doesn’t feel like a long time because we’ve managed to keep in touch and cherish the quality of our friendship.
It’s so important to be a safe space to people who have been a safe space to us. Don’t pressure people to open up to you — don’t put conditions on your friendships. Accept people for who they are and what they can offer. It’s one thing I have learned as a mentee during my mentor-seeking phase. Also, it’s essential to understand that each person has their own strengths. One friend cannot be everything to you every time.
To enjoy your friendship, you also need to be vulnerable, especially opening up about yourself and sharing with your friend those special and unique issues to them, trusting them and finding ways to feed their curiosity. Patience, acceptance, and sharing humor are also good tips that have greatly helped us.
For those who do not know yet, Ayomide will be a regular l co-host on the show — and we will be talking more along the lines of — being a cultural misfit, whether as an immigrant or otherwise (after all, we all have a sense of otherness in at least one area of life), our goal is to bring our experiences, talk about issues and how our peculiarities have shaped us.
This was a fantastic, warming, and soothing episode. Check out this episode and the last episode we’ve released this year here.
Yours Friendly,
Mo! & Ayomide (Doc Ayomide)
🅻🅸🅽🅺🆂:
Listen: https://bit.ly/TOWTT2022
Download: https://bit.ly/TOWTT2022DL
Or on the website: www.mosibyl.com