Birthdays, Mr. Abiy and Wikipedia

Hey Balthazar,

You turned two years old yesterday, happy belated birthday!

I hope you had a blast, even though it is highly unlikely you will remember any of it. But given the significance of your birthday, please allow me to share a message about how we celebrate birthday parties in today’s society.

But before that, I want to tell you that I’ll be sharing many messages with you, Balthazar, because sharing is a notion we all love in 2019, especially online. I will keep all of my messages in collection on Medium, this platform, and I will only yell you about this profile in 2035, when you turn 18 years old. That way, if you read my messages after your eighteenth birthday, you will come to realise how the world, society, technology, thoughts and interesses, among many other things, age and ripe in a rapid manner, whether it is for the good or for the bad.

In Amsterdam, the place where I waste most of my time with my contemporaries, I do regularly attend birthday parties. However, the problem with birthday parties is that they are celebrated pretty much in the same way as they were celebrated 20 years ago, and as they will probably be celebrated when you turn 18 years old yourself. What I am trying to tell you here, dear Balthazar, is that using birthday parties to exemplify my intention with our communication between 2019 and 2035 was a mistake, sorry!

Let me try to explain it differently.

I will regularly write you and your future friends about developments in the world, about society, about anything I believe might be of interest to you, sixteen years’ from today. And I might sometimes write you about more personal matters, too, I hope you don’t mind.

And as I write down these words, I realise we have no common understanding from where to start my letters to you. On the day that I will gift you this Medium profile, in 2035, you will probably not know a thing about 2019, other than potentially a few events you might remember from school, the regional tensions in North-East Syria for example.

But there are so many more things to update you about. A clever Swedish girl called Greta Thunberg, the final breaths of my treasured Ipod, the type of reality TV series people watch, and so many fascinating stories I come across when I read other articles on Medium. I might sometimes recommend you one.

Especially for you Balthazar, because you are only two years old. You don’t have to worry, it is okay to just do nothing now, take your rest. Just smile to your parents at times and reciprocate that effort by forcing them into short nights of sleep. In the meantime, I will capture 2019 for you.

Time to leave you with a something tangible than my introduction about what’s the come, Balthazar. Did you know that Greta Thunberg, who is only 16 years old, was nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize? I’ll tell you more about her another time, but she lost the Nobel Peace Prize Contest to a slightly older Ethiopian man, Mr. Abiy, and admirable young man with potential to bring regional stability in the historically troublesome East African region.

There are two camps, Balthazar. On the one side, we have Mr. Abiy’s supporters, who hail his achievements in settling a long-time dispute with neighbour Eritrea as a triumph. On the other side, there are strident critics who see unaddressed concerns in-country, beset by ethnic tensions. It’s a very interesting debate, Balthazar!

Oh, shit, I forgot to inform you that Mr. Abiy is the Prime Minister of Ethiopia before I bombarded you with secondary facts, sorry for that. Meanwhile, I guess you might have already used Google to discover who Mr. Abiy is, am I right? Is Google even still around in 2035 or do you make jokes about them and us, Google users, instead? And I have another burning question to ask you in 2035: are you reading this message on a screen that is somehow placed on to your pupil, like a “thin, curved lens placed on the film of tears that covers the surface of your eye?”

I stole that last definition from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia that is academically questioned, but that contains an amazing online resource to understand all you want to know about pretty much anything. Not too sure how much longer Wikipedia will still be around though, I guess that’s why I felt like sharing it. Wikipedia and I have been friends for many years.

Finally, I would like to tell you that I will introduce one more element to my messages. Each time, I will conclude with (a) question(s) I’d like to ask someone in 2035. Today, I choose to ask a question to Mr. Abiy:

This is the year 2035, Mr. Abiy, you are 59 years old now. So please tell us, what happened to your career? Did you live up to the high aspirations on the basis of which you were awarded the 2019 Noble Peace Prize?

Let us trust Mr.Abiy well, Balthazar!

Speak soon!

“