There is a story about Toots Shor. First, I hope I could acknowledge that I am not all that different from them. It takes courage to know. We choose not to know something terrible because lack of knowledge allows us to believe that the terrible something will not happen. Unhappily, however, denial only pushes fear down to a deeper level within us.
Denial seems profoundly at odds with the African value of community.
If I must deny something terrible about myself, then I must avoid knowing whether my neighbor has that terrible something. Self-protective denial eventually makes us strangers. In one of the episodes, a character finds out that he is HIV positive. When he finally shares the news with his family, they are initially shocked. However, the whole tone of the episode quickly changes.