From Me To You: Five Years On
You’ll pass your A-levels. You could have put more work in, but you didn’t. The truth is you won’t regret it, life will take you onto the next phase with minimal thought.
You could have chosen anywhere to live whilst at University, but you chose Leicester. You idiot. But then they’ll win the Premier League as 5000/1 outsiders in your first year, the City will fall into bedlam and you’ll slowly grow fond of the familiar and reassuring dreariness of it as the years go by.
The reservations you had about going to University, whether it was the right choice and if ultimately there was a point to going, will not subside. Somewhere along the way you’ll settle on the fact that there’s more value in moving in any direction than no direction. Things will happen that make you grateful for the choice and even as things seem hopeless there will be value in treating turmoil as a lesson. You won’t see it that way during the turmoil and that’s fine.
For the first time in your life you’ll get properly screwed over. It’ll shock you and make you more wary of who you put your trust in. Some people will see it as a weakness, but even the people who wrong you can be understood. There’s no joy in seeing other people make mistakes, but there’s strong rationale in not letting them drag you down with them.
For around two years you’ll feel constantly on edge about the fact you have no idea about what to do with your life. Two years later you’ll feel relieved you never decided.
You’ll hear constantly that the relationships you have with other people are what brings happiness. It’s true. You will have a diverse range of people in your life and the sheer amount of people you meet in the next five years will, on the whole, be a blessing.
Despite this, you’ll be relatively comfortable alone, which is important. Some people may call it introverted, but you’ll hear the saying ‘the weakest one in the room is the loudest’, apply it to various rooms and realise there’s a huge element of truth to it.
Certain things will make no sense. No matter how you try to get your head around it, you simply won’t understand. I suppose the hope is in the next five years more answers reveal themselves, or you regain comfort without full understanding. Regardless, it’s okay to be sad, anxious and depressed at times. These feelings cannot be escaped and are there for a reason. Some people will drink, or far worse, take drugs to try and escape them, even temporarily. It doesn’t work.
‘Be Yourself’, on the album Blond, will one day ring true, it’s a shame it will take until 2016 to hear it.
Frank Ocean is still awesome. You’ll see him live, he’ll mess up a few times and you’ll realise your idols are human too.
You will not like certain people. But rather than belittle, argue or generally conflict with them, realise the world is big enough for difference in opinions, everyone is basing their version of truth from different experiences. Try to understand opinions you haven’t considered, on occasion, too. And yes, some people are just aresholes.
You’ll be lucky enough to travel a lot. To start 2018, you’ll somehow make it to New York during a winter cyclone of freezing weather, then having not slept for nearly 24 hours stand in Times Square and realise the world is cooler than you even realised.
You’ll graduate too. Towards the end you’ll be torn between selling your soul for short term gain or sticking to your moral integrity. It hasn’t paid off financially, but you can sleep just fine at night. Where you see injustice, try to help, try to find answers and question everything. Curiosity will take you further than familiarity.
There’s a lot more to say. There’s a hell of a lot more to know and experience.
Right now, you’re in your own place, having moved out of home much sooner than you realistically expected. You’ve pushed yourself to do it and have a good job where you can really help people. The one person you want to talk to it all about, you can’t.
At times it will feel like to gain something in life you have to lose something too. It will feel immensely unfair. Be grateful for the people who want to reassure you, give you advice and even take time out of their own life to help yours. They don’t have to.
You’ll want to know everything. No two days are the same now. The only thing you can do is keep moving forward, at times incredibly slowly, barely hanging on. But you do. You keep moving forward and when you do look back you can be proud of how far you’ve come.
Deep down you know the next five years might be even harder. But you also know how much unseen joy is on the horizon. The one thing you’ll learn about life is there is truly infinite possibility, just in a finite amount of time.
Getting older is scary, the idea of dying, losing other people and simply one day no longer existing, even scarier. Maybe you don’t need to know everything though. Keep reading, keep being curious and more importantly than anything — keep going.
You can make a mark on the world, and you will.
Inspired by:

