Dear
Twenty-Four-Year-Old Me
So,
here we are at last. It's me, the one with the floral bowtie. As per
the rules, you'll get my letter before I get yours, so let's have a
chat.
Obviously,
you know more than I do, but let me tell you what I know- and that is
that it's very difficult to know anything about yourself with any
real certainty. I'm not going to go so far as to say that all
knowledge is merely opinion, but identities are things that are
constantly in flux. If you don't believe me, read some of the other
letters that Eighteen wrote. They're beyond incomprehensible. I know
we do our best to bury Nineteen in our memory, and that seems a
little unfair- he had a lot of issues he was dealing with. I mean-
look at Sixteen- that guy is an idiot, but so am I, and so are you.
Just because you're an idiot, that doesn't mean you can't also try to
change that.
I
have so many questions for you- did we finish Honour's? Did we finish
Master's? Did we ever get around to watching The Wire?
I will make some predictions, and you can laugh at me if they're
wrong and condescendingly nod if I'm right. By now, you must have
left university- you couldn't possibly have stayed in tertiary
education for seven years in a row. Remember the word of advice Toby
said to us, that we couldn't go directly from university back into
secondary school teaching without a break- it would start a countdown
to which there would be a meltdown when it hit zero. Let us therefore
make the assumption that you are not still at university.
The question is, where are you now? You might have taken a gap year
after finishing Honour's (I have higher hopes for you than Eighteen
had for me). Perhaps you did the Postgraduate Diploma in Education
when you were Twenty-Two and are now teaching. Maybe you're in
another country, doing your Ph.D. I've long held the belief that
doctoral study is a passport to any decent university. Alas, I don't
think you have the patience for such study. It's an interesting time
for me, because a lot of this year has come to revolve around the
question: how far is too far? Certainly, when I look around and see
that most of my classmates have parachuted out of City Campus in
order to engage with “the real world”, I sometimes wonder if my
time spent in Honour's is worth it. What opportunities am I closing
the door on in order for further study? On the reverse side, what
opportunities have I not even thought about which further study will
grant me? The only appropriate method to answering these questions,
is by systematically finding out where my life is going by allocating
equal parts of my attention to higher education, and to my friends.
There's an interesting quote I read which summarizes
what this, the rise of the roaring twenties, seems increasingly to be
about: “half of my friends are moving out and having children, and
the other half are too drunk to find their phones”. It accurately
describes how my college community is dividing itself, and I am happy
enough to see people move from the latter category of person to the
former. Where I will fit in, I do not know, though I hope that you
don't know either. We are not men who draw lines in the sand. We are
not street fighters who refuse to cross picket lines. We never have
been. People get killed when they stay in the middle of the road
because the middle of the road is dangerous- but I dislike metaphors
where life is portrayed as a journey on the road. I laugh in the face
of danger, because I laugh when I'm afraid.
From
the novel The Go-Between, “the
past is another country. They do things differently there”. Indeed,
I am interested in seeing what is lost in translation and what is
not. I often wonder what kind of costumes I will be wearing at
Twenty-Four. Will you keep wearing rings, the jewelery which has come
to define my era? I hope you'll at least keep wearing the black-glass
one. We have enjoyed a long and fascinating tenure as sartorialists,
have we not? I'm sure, at least, that you will continue our honoured
tradition of playing dress-up with the world. Give me that,
Twenty-Four, allow me that.
I have other letters to write so I will conclude this one. I just
want to remind you that no matter what trials and tribulations you're
going through right now, you will get through this. We will get
through this. I am not you, but you were once me and you know this-
we lived through Nineteen, and he went through the worst of it. I
hope this letter finds you well. I believe in you, I trust you, and
I'm counting on you.
Love,
Twenty-One-Year-Old Me.
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