12 - The Invitation

Toye Oyelese

Hello, I’m Dr. Toye Oyelese and welcome to the final episode of Navigating Blind. Before I launch into today’s talk, I just want to pause and say: this journey—these eleven previous episodes—has honestly been less about giving answers and more about throwing pebbles in the pond. You know, seeing if the ripples might help some fellow traveler spot the shore. Today’s different—it’s not just a summary, it’s an invitation. But to get there, let me retrace my own map.

Toye Oyelese

I was almost blind until I was seven. Didn’t know it—thought everyone saw the word ‘blackboard’ as a foggy smear. Survived it by guessing shapes, hoping no one would notice. Then, at nine, my father died. I waited for him to rise, like Lazarus, thinking I’d somehow missed the miracle, just behind another door.

Toye Oyelese

My mind pretty much unraveled at eleven. Sometimes the world just shatters, and you have to decide what pieces to pick up. So I did—mostly by inventing rules, inventing categories, pretending I could define what exists just to keep moving.

Toye Oyelese

By twenty-four, I landed in Canada—two suitcases, one battered, one new. Suddenly, everything I knew about myself evaporated; back in Ibadan, my name meant something. In Toronto, it meant nothing beyond a pronouncer’s nightmare.

Toye Oyelese

Security guard by night, medical exams by day, hoping nobody would call on me to spell the names of the diseases—ankylosing spondylitis, I still get tongue-tied, I can’t pronounce it smoothly to this day. That’s one of those times a patient corrected me, right there in the exam room. Humbled me. Reminded me how all of us are basically stumbling around, pretending to see clearly when most of us are feeling our way, blind in our own way.

Toye Oyelese

So, after sixty-two years, raising two sons, working with thousands of patients, building a life from uncertainty, I can say this much: I still don’t know what life is for. I don’t really know if consciousness is what I think it is—some sort of committee meeting inside my skull, or just neurons and luck.

Toye Oyelese

My models—the house with residents, the math of SW plus A plus T equals D, the idea that a mind arbitrates between internal desires—they may not be true. Might just be useful, the way a stick is useful to feel for potholes in the dark. I honestly don’t know. The best I can offer is: what I ‘know’ is mostly what I don’t.

Toye Oyelese

But there’s a divide—what I know I don’t know, and what repeated observation refuses to let me forget. Say you’re caught in crisis—in your own burning building—that’s become the lens for a lot of my work.

Toye Oyelese

Over four decades: challenge arrives, it throws everything into chaos, you scramble just to survive the fire, and if you can, you grow through it. Then, bang—just as things stabilize, another challenge. The cycle repeats. I see this with everyone—patients, friends, even my own stubborn self.

Toye Oyelese

At the rock-bottom of each crisis, decisions seem to collapse into binary: want, don’t want. All the fancy explanations, the psychological wallpaper, peel off and you’re left with, “Do I stay? Do I run? Do I say yes to treatment? No?” That’s the deepest layer we talked about in the “Binary Outcomes” episode—it operates biologically, emotionally, everywhere.

Toye Oyelese

And here’s where the practical tools come in. I've thrown a lot at you over the series—Mind Enclosure, the Best Friend idea, daily Validation, the Rules Framework, the Process Method, and of course, SW+A+T=D.

Toye Oyelese

These aren’t miracle cures, but they’re like a roadmap out of the fire. Take Mind Enclosure, for example—picture your mind like a house full of residents, each one representing a different part of you: the angry one, the hopeful one, the scared one. You can't evict any of them, but you can listen to each voice and decide who takes the keys for the day.

Toye Oyelese

I remember, some years back, sitting with a patient deep in addiction—life just in free fall. I shared this house-of-mind thing, not as any kind of new-age wisdom, but as a basic survival scaffold. We worked on naming the ‘residents’ that were always interrupting—the one who ‘just wants relief,’ the one who still hopes for recovery.

Toye Oyelese

We wrote down their goals, tried to see what voice was in charge before every relapse. Sometimes, just shining a flashlight on those internal debates gave her enough room to choose differently that afternoon. Didn't fix everything. But it changed the next step.

Toye Oyelese

All these tools—the Best Friend habit, arguing gently with yourself instead of just waiting for motivation, regular self-validation, learning the rules of the game you’re actually playing, focusing on the process not just the outcome—they don’t require you to “believe” in them. Just try them, especially when you’re in survival mode. Toss aside what doesn’t work for you. These are, literally, crisis survival skills that grew out of necessity, not theory.

Toye Oyelese

So, what am I really inviting you to? If you’re a regular listener, or someone whose natural habitat is a lab or a codebase: the challenge is the same. Test this model of mind. Here’s the core hypothesis—maybe it sounds familiar by now: human consciousness isn’t a solo act; it’s a household.

Toye Oyelese

Multiple preference-voices, always competing. Which one dominates depends on the equation—Spoken Word, plus Action, plus Thought, equals Direction. Whoever gets the most airtime, the most reinforcement, takes the wheel for that moment. It’s like the internal parliament, but with poor Robert’s Rules of Order.

Toye Oyelese

And here’s a question for the researchers and technologists: if this model is anywhere near correct, shouldn’t we try building artificial intelligence that works like this? Not just a single algorithm churning out outputs, but a system with competing residents, a sort of household full of sub-processes, arguing before reaching consensus? AI that debates itself, not just calculates. Maybe that gets us closer to something recognizably human, and not just “clever parrot” behavior.

Toye Oyelese

I want to be clear: I don’t know if this is true. But that’s why I want it tested, not just believed. Put it to work in your own life, if you want—see if giving voice to your ‘residents’ and adjusting your daily articulation actually shifts your direction. Or, for the data-minded among you, poke holes in the model!

Toye Oyelese

Falsify it. Build a different house and see if it works better. All maps are just that—maps, not the territory. Mine helped me avoid a few cliffs; it might, or might not, help you with yours.

Toye Oyelese

You know, after all the stories, all the metaphors, all the frameworks, I come back to the same null hypothesis: what I don’t know is bigger, wider, deeper than what I ever will. If you’re standing at a crossroads, questioning your resources, your clarity, your next move—yeah, you’re navigating blind, like all of us. Survive first, then thrive. And if anything I’ve said across these episodes helps your journey, hey, terrific. If not? Toss it aside. The next step is yours. Thank you for travelling this path with me. Until we meet again—survive, then thrive.