Alma Ohene-Opare: Why I Chase the American Dream
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Alma grew up wanting to reach his goals, but he knew he wouldn't achieve them in Ghana. So he set his sights on the American Dream. 

In today's show Alma and I talk about:

• How discontent plus courage equal innovation and creation.
• Recognizing and reaching for your full potential.
• How all things work together for good to them that love God.
• Always look to the glory of your destination and set your own rhythm and pace.
• Compete with yourself and not others.
• Be willfully positive in everything you do.
• Choose courage over comfort.
• Freedom of speech for everyone and what true unity looks like.
• The choice to be "offended."

You can find Alma at http://almaopare.com/) or on social media under Alma Ohene-Opare.

Alma Ohene-Opare 0:01 

It just bothered me. Why couldn't I dream freely? Why couldn't I think about something that has never been done and find a way to do it? Unfortunately for me, I could not see that happening in Ghana. It became my quest and my goal somehow to come to America for some reason, because of what my dad had told me. I always thought America was the place where that could happen.

 

Tamara Anderson 0:31 

Welcome to Stories of Hope in Hard Times, the show that explores how people endure and even thrive in difficult times, all with God's help. I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson. Join me on a journey to find inspiring stories of hope and wisdom learned in life's hardest moments.

My next guest is originally from Ghana, West Africa. He first came to the United States as a missionary in Los Angeles, California. After his mission, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in Information Technology and later obtained an MBA. He and his wife have four kids between the ages of three and 13. He currently works as a senior solutions engineer at DOMO. His hobbies include public speaking, writing, entrepreneurship, and most importantly, spending time with his wife and children. I am pleased to introduce Alma Ohene-Opare. Alma, are you ready to share your story of hope?

Alma Ohene-Opare 1:35 

Yes, I am. Thank you for having me.

Tamara Anderson 1:37 

I am so excited to have you. Alma and I met through a connection a couple of months ago. He has just been so inspiring to talk to. I have had the chance to talk to him a couple of times. He is just amazing. I'm just so thrilled to have him on the podcast today. So Alma, tell me a little bit about growing up in West Africa. And how it is that you chase this American dream of coming here to America and why you did that.

Alma Ohene-Opare 2:09 

Well, how much time do you have? Yeah, it's a long story. But in a nutshell, my journey here kind of started a long, long time ago, long before I sat on the plane to get here. My life in Ghana, I would say, for the most part, was privileged in the sense that I grew up in a very stable family, we had everything we needed. There wasn't much that I needed that I didn't have. My parents were successful. My mom was an entrepreneur. My dad worked for the government. For all intents and purposes I would say I lived a good life as a child in Ghana. There was never a time where I was hungry or had any wants that were not met. In general, I would say I had a pretty good childhood. I attribute that to the various sacrifices my parents had to make. Because, from my perspective, we were well to do. Maybe not from their perspective.

The reason I bring that up is that a lot of times we think about people coming to America as people who, you know, were potentially oppressed in some way where they came from. That wasn't the case for me. My fascination with America happened after my dad visited America when I was young, in 1989. When my dad came back, he brought pictures of places he had visited. All those things just fascinated me and stuck with me for a long time. So I knew as a child, I wanted to come to America. But that desire became more solidified as I grew up. The one experience I point to that really made that difference for me was an experience I had when I was in high school.

Basically, I wanted to create a pinhole camera. I had a physics book that had step-by-step instructions on how to make a pinhole camera. I was really excited to do it. I got some friends together and we started working on this. The very first thing we recognized was we needed to get all the different materials or the different tools that we needed.

One of the things we needed was camera film. I started looking for this camera film, I went all over the capitol trying to find it. On the very last day, after three days of searching, I found one photography shop that had this camera film, so I picked up the film, got back to my friends and we set off to create our first pinhole camera. So we built the camera, we followed all the instructions. Once we were done, we took some pictures.

The thing that made this experience sour a little bit for me was the fact that after we had done that, I was never able to find a place where I could print the pictures. I never found out whether what we had done had worked.

It really bothered me I thought I had this dream, this thing, this idea that I wanted to create something that nobody else was doing. But because of the place where I lived, I could not even tell whether what I had done had worked.

I wanted so badly to be in a place where I could dream and not have my dreams be subjugated to what that society could give me. It just bothered me. Why couldn't I dream freely? Why couldn't I think about something that has never been done and find a way to do it? Unfortunately for me, I could not see that happening in Ghana.

It became my quest and my goal, somehow to come to America, for some reason, because of what my dad had told me. I always thought America was the place where that could happen. After all, the great things that were happening and being invented in the world, many of them were being invented in America. So I just gravitated towards this idea that this was the place where I could make the kind of difference that I wanted to make in the world.

Tamara Anderson 6:44 

Wow, that's an amazing idea to plant in the mind of a child. It's amazing how our brain can grab on to something like that, and build a dream and build a hope that okay, I can't get it done here. So I need to change, right?

Alma Ohene-Opare 7:04 

Exactly. And I take nothing away from people in Ghana who are trying to make a difference there. I take nothing away from them. I am not suggesting in any way that you can't make it in Ghana, or you can't succeed in Ghana. I'm not saying that.

I think my message here is that for me personally, the scope of my imagination was beyond the scope of what I thought was achievable in Ghana. It wasn't for lack of trying, it’s just that as a society, I felt we had not gotten to that point.

We are still dealing with basically feeding ourselves and taking care of the basic needs that people have. That makes it very difficult to spend any real resources on creating a society where people can achieve all their dreams. It's not for the lack of trying, it's just that we're not there yet as a society. I wanted to be in a place where I was not limited because of the infrastructural limitations of the country.

Tamara Anderson 8:20 

Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about your journey coming to America. I know you've lived here for many, many years, and finally, are able to apply for citizenship. So I'm really excited for you.

One of the cool things about Alma is he has been working on writing a book that kind of talks about his perspective as an immigrant on becoming an American. I don't want to spoil anything about your book yet, because I think it's going to be a fantastic book in rekindling this hope and this dream of what America truly has been and can continue to be if we if we make the choices to allow it to be what it's always meant to be. So what so why don't you take me through that?

Alma Ohene-Opare 9:16 

My journey to America was kind of serendipitous, actually, because the bottom line is coming to America is not something you just wake up one day and say, “Hey, I want to go to America,” and it just happens. It doesn't work that way, at least not in Ghana. People work their entire lives, and they never make it even if they had the means to. So for me it was serendipitous.

When I applied to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of course, I could have been sent to anywhere in the world. My most likely spot was going to be somewhere in Nigeria, because from my perspective, 90% of the people went there. But when I opened that mission call, I was very surprised to find out that I was called to go to Los Angeles, California. It was quite a revelation to me when that happened, and I knew that this was something that was meant to be.

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there's something we call a patriarchal blessing. In a patriarchal blessing, sometimes it will give you somewhat of a roadmap as to how your choices in life could lead you to where God intends for you to go. Usually these are kept private, but I felt impressed to share this.

One of the things that was said in my patriarchal blessing was that I would have the opportunity to visit many lands, many places in the world. I'd always known that it was going to happen at some point. But I didn't know how or when. By receiving that mission call, I knew that my destiny was actually in progress at that point. I was very, very excited to embrace that call.

One of the things that also made it very interesting was that Los Angeles was exactly the place my dad had gone to in 1989 that planted that seed in me. So it was quite a coincidence, you would say, called exactly to the same area that he had gone to. Not only that, but while I was there, I would get to meet some of the people he had met, some of the people who had influenced his life while he was there 20 years before. So it was quite a magical kind of puzzle, all coming together that way. But that is basically how I got to America was through that mission call.

So I spent my very first two years in America as a missionary. That gave me a perspective of America that I don't believe that a lot of people get. I spent two years going from door to door, from neighborhood to neighborhood, from poor neighborhood to rich neighborhood, and truly understood what people were experiencing in their own lives, what their challenges were, the struggles they had to overcome on a day to day basis.

And I saw how many of them overcame those struggles and those challenges, how people were able to overcome in spite of their circumstances. That always gave me a great appreciation for how transformative a society could be to a person if that society is set up in such a way that it allows that person to explore every facet of their potential. I would say I got a first row seat to the American experience, as I went door to door for two years. That experience gave me a deep and abiding appreciation for this country, and for this society and confirmed, in many cases, some of the dreams and the expectations and aspirations I had, as a young child thinking about coming to America. 

Tamara Anderson 13:44 

Wow. So you think that perhaps one of the things you learned was that having freedoms allows people to reach their potential, whatever they envision that potential to be?

Alma Ohene-Opare 13:58 

Exactly. One philosophy I've adopted over the years is that the worst thing you can do to a person is to hide from them their potential. The worst thing you can do beyond that is for someone to have a potential and not know it. I think it's one of the greatest tragedies that we have or we can experience in this life.

I believe that America, despite its flaws, despite the history, despite some of the things that still exist today, I would say it is still the place where almost anybody can embrace that potential within them and make a difference not only in their lives, but in the lives of those around them. One of the things I picked up while I was here was this idea of contentment.

If you were to ask me, “What is the current quintessential American characteristic?” I would say one of those characteristics is discontent. I have come to embrace discontent as a virtue. The reason I say that is this; because it is discomfort and discontent that are the engine for creation and innovation. It is discontent that causes a person to wake up and say, “I will not take this anymore, I am going to design and build something better, I am going to do something different today than I did yesterday.” It is discontent.

When you wake up every day being comfortable in your life, you don't have any desire, you don't have any motivation to change anything. It's only through discontent, that you can create new things, that you can explore other aspects of your potential that you have not yet explored. That was something that I feel is very unique about Americans.

Coupled with that discontent is courage. Right? This is a society that is uniquely attuned to courage, the belief that I can do it, I don't have to wait for someone to do it. And I can take the risks necessary to make that thing come to be. 

Tamara Anderson 16:31 

I love that.

Alma Ohene-Opare 16:32 

So couple discontented people with the courage to take action, and you have a society that does not get enough of innovating and creating. For a child within the imaginative mind, who is constantly thinking about how to make things better, it became almost symbiotic for me to be in a place where I could marry that excitement with a society that embraces discontent, and embrace the courage to go pursue solving and removing that discontent.

Tamara Anderson 17:11 

Wow. That's really cool. I've never thought about discontent in that way. But that is it. Sometimes we feel like okay, I don't like that. How can I change it? And it's that idea that we can change that inspires us to act courageously. Right? It's that idea, 'Okay, yeah, I can make a difference. I can think about this differently or try to problem solve.' It’s amazing that you've put those two together. That is really cool.

Alma Ohene-Opare 17:45 

Think about it, like America is a place where you can think about something in the morning, you can go to Home Depot in the afternoon, and you can have a prototype made by evening. It’s America. It is not the same in other places. I know people who have dreams, big dreams, who are stifled at every turn. Not because there is some system that is stifling them. It's just that the society is not built. It's not at the level where everybody's dreams can be given a fair shot. 

Tamara Anderson 18:25 

Yeah. Well, and I think we had a little bit of this conversation before we started recording, but you talked about that America isn't perfect. We talked about how America is imperfect. And that's okay. But it does give us the opportunity to have freedoms so that we can become, we can pursue these dreams. 

Alma Ohene-Opare 19:01 

That is true, I think, in a terrestrial sense. We have to admit, once and for all, that perfection is not compatible with freedom. Because in any scenario where you have freedom, that also means that people have freedom to fail, the freedom to choose to do things that are not in their best interest.

It should be expected that America is not perfect. Anybody who expects America to be perfect is not living in a real world. Because if you have freedom, you cannot have perfection. A scenario where you can claim any kind of perfection is to eliminate freedom. That is the only scenario where you can create or mold things into a predetermined, exact shape. You can find that at any time any group of people have come together anywhere, and had in mind the idea to create a perfect society, that always ends up bad, because freedom is not compatible with perfection. I think that is something that we need to get over.

As an immigrant coming here, most immigrants, I would hope are not coming here because they believe America is perfect. I think many of us come here because we believe that, in spite of imperfection, we can make choices of our own. Those choices have consequences that can be good for us. That can lead us towards what we feel is our ambition, our dream or goal. Many, many thousands of immigrants are able to do that here in America, in spite of its imperfections.

Tamara Anderson 21:01 

I really love how you've laid that out. I was thinking about what you said about how freedom is incompatible with perfection. I really think that if we had somebody like God as ruler that they would be more compatible, but being that we are all imperfect people and that sometimes people who get into power, like, for example, Hitler or something like that, and they're dreaming of what they view as a perfect society. It limits the freedoms of others. But God being perfect. I'm just envisioning someday, this Millennium when Christ will reign on earth. And at that point, freedom and perfection can be hand in hand. 

Alma Ohene-Opare 22:05 

Yeah, and I would agree with that. That's why I prefaced that statement by saying in the terrestrial sense, right, which means in this earthly state, you have that incompatibility. If man made himself God and said, “I am going to impose perfection in this terrestrial state,” it doesn't end up well.

I do understand that a time will come, from a Christian perspective, when evil will be defeated. But one thing that I think is good to note is that in that world, there is still the freedom for people to choose not to be in that world. So you recognize that in order for that perfection to exist, God will force no person to heaven. Which means that people have to choose not to be there. And that's okay, as well. Right? People will make choices and based on those choices, they will disqualify themselves willingly. From being in that world with him.

Tamara Anderson 23:19 

Wow. Okay, we kind of dove a little deep there. Let's kind of go a little back on into your journey, getting to America, and achieving this American dream. That was not an easy process for you and your family, correct? 

Alma Ohene-Opare 23:39 

Definitely not. Maybe I can consider myself as someone who has achieved the American dream. But my ambitions are still bigger than where I am right now. So I'm still on that journey. But it was not all roses along the path. Definitely not.

Tamara Anderson 24:05 

Wow, why don't why don't you take us along that path? And tell us how you're able to keep a positive perspective, despite the challenges that you were faced with?

Alma Ohene-Opare 24:18 

Yeah, definitely. So one of the very first things that I had to deal with as a challenge was one that I came to after my mission. I came back to the US as a college student. If you don't know anything about immigration law and college students, one of the things that college students who are studying here in America who are immigrants are not allowed to do is work outside of campus. You are only allowed to work on campus. You're also restricted to 20 hours a week.

The rationale is that you are...