25 Up

Every year, on my birthday, I write an essay to myself and decide whether to publish it or not.

You can read what I wrote on my 21st and my 24th. I like the ritual. There’s something special about being able to look back years later and remember what I was thinking at the time.

A lot has happened since my last one.

Since moving to London, I’ve made new friends, started a new job, and been fortunate enough to travel more than I ever have. Five years ago today, I celebrated my 20th birthday alone in a hotel room in Central London, quarantining during the pandemic. My mom stood outside the window with a cake and waved happy birthday.

Half a decade later, I walk past that same hotel on my way to work in King’s Cross.

I have no idea what the next year will hold. I expect it to be the most difficult I’ve had so far, for various reasons.

But I’m extremely optimistic.

I have no idea what the next five years will look like either, or where I’ll be. That’s only a semi-lie.

I do have an idea of where I’m going, and I’m confident I’ll get there given enough time. What I’m equally confident about is that the journey will look nothing like I imagine it will.

Life has taught me that it does not give a shit about my plans.

The good news is that it has no choice but to eventually respond to what I decide I want.

One of the most transformative things I’ve realised is that life isn’t something that simply happens to me.

It happens because of me.

I can reach out, influence things, change things, and create things. For a while, I was quite proud of having figured that out.

Then I discovered Timothée Chalamet had said basically the same thing in an interview.

So much for originality.

Over the past year, I’ve also rediscovered a love of reading. I took myself down to the biggest Waterstones near Piccadilly Circus and bought a couple of books.

One was written by a dead guy called Seneca.

In On the Shortness of Life, he argues that life is long enough if we know how to spend it.

I’ve become increasingly fascinated by how many people who accomplished extraordinary things were deeply aware of their own mortality. Marcus Aurelius. Steve Jobs. Other great men throughout history.

They knew they had limited time, and that knowledge created a sense of urgency.

It’s difficult to appreciate just how improbable it is that any of us are here at all. The odds of being born exactly as the person you are are unimaginably small. Add in your parents meeting, their parents meeting, and every event that had to happen before you existed, and the probability becomes almost absurd.

And yet, here we are.

There’s an ITV documentary series that has been running for 63 years. It began by filming a group of children at seven years old and returning to document their lives every seven years.

The latest episode came out a couple of weeks ago.

Those little seven year olds are now 70.

Some have died.

One of them described it beautifully: watching a flower slowly bloom, become radiant in all its beauty, and then, seemingly all at once, shrivel away.

I think it might be the best documentary I’ve ever watched.

If you watch anything this month, watch it.

Or, at the very least, watch the introduction:

So what am I doing for my 25th birthday?

Depending on when this is published, there’s a good chance I’m climbing Scafell Pike. It’s the tallest mountain in England at 979 metres.

I like the idea of climbing a mountain on my birthday.

We get a surprisingly short amount of time here. We have very little control over how the journey unfolds, but we do get some say in what we do with the time we have.

So, here’s to making the most of it.

And here’s to many more mountains (literal and otherwise) to come.