#21: Happy New Year?

Dear Friend,

I must start off by acknowledging that this letter is perchance more for me than it is for you. As the year I turned 30 comes to an end, and my birthday ever so closer, I find myself wondering how I shall remember this year when my memory starts to fail me. I have inadvertently revealed one of my greatest fears - alive, frail, an overactive mind trying to recall, recollect, pieces of me that I spent so long shaping, curating and performing. You are probably curious what about this year was worth remembering. I am fairly curious as well. I think that’s why I am finally writing to you, at this time. It seems pertinent to me that I must mark the passing of this year the only way I know how, with words. I fear that this letter might be a whole lot of nothing, half-baked ideas, and maybe even third-rate achievements, yet I believe noting it is important. It seems to me almost imperative. How am I to recollect the leaking pieces of me when time starts to pilfer them away? So, forgive me when I ramble, take windy detours or seem to make no point during this letter. This is just one man’s meagre attempt to leave clues for a version of himself he fears to one day meet, or be. The year is 2025, I turned 30…

You know this, friend, but bear with me: I do not like my birthdays. This year was no different, and save for the kindness of a few friends, could have been worse. Despite this, I remember the day fondly. I sobbed softly during We Live in Time, laughed loudly during Sonic 3 and devoured a decadent chocolate cake slice after a long walk. It was not the best of the days, it was not the worst of days. All through the day, I was left with this feeling that something had shifted that I was not prepared for, could not even place. I have tried so hard to live by my own internal timeline, but there are so many reminders when living - and engaging - with the world that 30 is a defining age. Maybe not that man is made at 30, but that somehow by 30 - one should know in which direction this man is headed. I do not know where I am headed. I thought I had, thought I saw glimpses of it several times. However, it is hard to be sure now; it has been hard to be sure all year. I wonder if this is a consequence of feeling so untethered. Of feeling like there is no place I can retreat to when it (living) all gets too much. I do not know. I guess I also realised this year just how much I do not know about anything, life or myself. Now that I am 30, am I allowed to say stuff like: “certainty is the young man’s game.”?

I would not find out that I had failed the exam I wrote a few days before my birthday till the next month. At which time, I was tidying up my dissertation fairly confident in my application to my academic and professional progress. It did not take long for the feelings that pervaded my birthday to return. I thought maybe this was the thing that had shifted. M would hear of my uncertainty as the deadline approached, the morbid jokes masking my fear and anxiety. I have never been one to court failure, subsequently I do not try many things. I am working on it, Cioran, alas it is not easy. In a way, I guess starting my 30s off with failure is not the collapse of my life I imagined it was at the time. I am unsure what it could be, and although some good coming out of it is definitely one of the possibilities, I am wary of spending any or too much time thinking of it. Certainty is the young man’s game; I am wary that much of youth is already behind me, if any is left at all.

“Yet a day comes when a man notices or says he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is absurd.”

I read this passage by Camus, from the Myth of Sisyphus, when I was way too young - not enough past to have many regrets and too much future as to be excited by the myriad of possibilities. Thirty seemed so far away. I read him lightly, only taking note of the perceived audacity of his thoughts, the structure of his sentences. Reminded by this quote by a post on Instagram, and interacting with the person who posted it, I realised that perhaps much of what Camus wrote in that essay had gone over my head. I had read the essay with certainty (of youth) in my beliefs and my emotions. Although it appears that Camus and I have varying ideas of youth, I think I am beginning to understand what he means to take my place in time. I might not know where I am headed, but I can not deny that I am at a point where I have to see the end. My curiosity compels me. Yet, I am unsure of just how feasible it is to take place my time, unsure of how I must reject tomorrow, and quite simply, unsure if I even, now, fully grasp the point Camus is trying to make here (or if it might even apply to me). I am sure of this though: I just turned 30, and even if something has shifted, I just have to get on with it, somehow.

I believe friendships might be the highest form of love that a human is capable of. I mean this of those friends who sustain you, comfort you, and leave a light on for you to always return to. I am often in awe of just how absurd it is to simply be loved by a friend, because and in spite of. To open one’s self up to the promise of friendship is an immense risk to self, to risk being seen and then rejected for who one is. Still, friendship’s lure demands one takes the plunge - risk the unwanted calls, ‘needy’ messages, and awkward silences. I guess if The Law of Equivalent Exchange holds true, then it makes sense for the highest form of love to come with what I perceive so high a cost.

“Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost.”

I called M a few days after my graduation, warmth in my chest while fighting the cold wind on my walk, and told him that I felt things were looking up. It was one of the few times in the year that I called M optimistic about this new place I had found myself in. I was on my way to a hangout with new friends who enjoyed my presence and invited me out to celebrate my graduation. I had no plans to, and they insisted. It was a kindness I felt undeserving of but had been yearning for for a while. I was reminded of my last letter to you, of waiting for the moment when this place opened up to me and I found friends. I can not say if this place has truly opened up to me, but I see a whole lot more of it with these friends. A lot has happened since then, and probably a lot more will (as is wont), however I feel a bit sturdier knowing I have these friends here with me.

I wonder if this occurred as a result of the last concept I shared with you: “decenter friendships”, or if just holding the idea in my head helped. Alas, another thing I do not know for certain. I know this though, this Christmas I received my first presents in over 10 years from a friend, and his family, and I have never been more grateful for taking risks in such a long time. I will not be going on a risk taking spree anytime soon however; I do not trust myself to be that lucky.

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” — Heraclitus

Camus writes that the man who admits that he is thirty has been longing for tomorrow. As the end of the year approaches, I feel this collecting longing for tomorrow from people around me. It manifests itself in the hope that comes with new beginnings, the excitement of starting again, and the opportunity to do better. My birthday being at the start of the year however means that for me, I find myself doing quite a lot of grieving at the end of the year. I mourn the passing of time, old friendships and parts of me that seem forever lost. With each year, I (must) become something more - maybe not greater or less - but definitely more. My memories, regrets, lost friendships, interests, and body pains all seem to increase and I have nowhere to hold them all. There are more books to read, more films to see, more chapters of One Piece… I fear I am only living to find out the end of One Piece. It seems that with each passing year, the idea that one can remain true to one’s self is either nigh on impossible or simply herculean (mythically difficult).

The Ship of Theseus is one of my favourite thought experiments. Simply, a ship on its voyage has all its parts slowly replaced during the voyage. At the voyage’s end, provided the crew, name and purpose of the ship have remained the same, is it still the same ship? My gut reaction when I first encountered this was to say that it was not the same ship, and I felt smug when I stumbled on Heraclitus’ “… not the same river … not the same man”. I do not think the captain of the ship would agree with me though. If I were to hazard a guess, I would assume he’d say it is the same ship. Honestly, I don’t know if I could fault him even if I do not agree with him. I like to believe I am still the same person; I am still the same Osondu. Yet, so much has changed. There are things, people, places that I do not like, talk or go to anymore. My beliefs have been battered with time, taking on new faces like rock cliffs eroded and weathered by the sea. So what makes a ship and what makes a man? Am I the additive or synergistic sum of all my parts? Or something more? What parts of myself do I stay true to? How do I know which parts of me to stay true to? The questions abound. And while Theseus’s ship allows me to toy with these ideas, none of the proffered solutions to this paradox help assuage my uncertainty. I am on a voyage; I do not know where I am headed; I do not know (at least fully and at its core) who I am.

My life is, at best, a collection of unexecuted ideas - hobbies, podcasts, essays and letters. I wrote this in my notes during one of my walks in September. I felt then that I was losing touch with the Osondu that always spent his time with his head in books and anime, writing bad poetry and passable prose; I had lost touch with the Osondu that dared to do. This is a part of me that I feel surprisingly certain (even now) that I do not want to lose. Yet, I find myself struggling to hold on to it as this voyage continues. It is one of the reasons I write these letters, however sporadic they might be. I guess in a way, (Osondu 10 years from now), this is how I keep this part with me, carrying it into every year. I am all the unexecuted ideas, I am the sporadic letters, I am the “now struggles to keep in touch”, the overthinker, the clown, the friend. I was all these things, am all these things, and maybe will or will not be some of these things. Once in a while, I am reminded by this quote from The Life of Chuck: “I am wonderful. I deserve to be wonderful. I contain multitudes.” I leave judging how wonderful I am to you, my friend, but I say this with a healthy amount of certainty: I contain multitudes.

As the new year slowly approaches, I am filled with a greater sense of liminality than I ever feel during the year. The pressing awareness that I am in the in-between, forever transitioning between who I am training/trying to be and who I will finally settle as. I remember a time before this awareness crept up on me, almost a lifetime ago during my first degree. I felt insulated from all the flux in the world - naïve, young, afraid to take my place anywhere, not less in time. I have a working theory that this is one of the reasons I love academia - away from the world but still within. I have had to wrestle with this unsettling feeling - one foot always in the familiar, the other hovering over an unknown, but supposedly promising future.

I am reminded of Janus. As a child, I was rather miffed to discover that the god after which my birth month was named was just the god of doorways. So… like a deified doorman? I thought then. Now, I feel sort of akin to him. One face fixed firmly on the past, the other on the future, while my body remains fixed to the present. Janus is more than the god of doorways, he is also the god of beginnings and ends. His name is written to have been evoked before that of Jupiter (Zeus) - definitely more than a deified doorman. I do not consider myself a praying man - though I remember a time I might have been one - but I wonder what Janus would think of my presence in the in-between, especially as it seems like I have been there for years. Am I in his way How long do doorways have to get before they become tunnels? Would Janus still be god in this extended doorway? I digress. I must find a way to make peace with this liminality, especially as it seems this is a feeling that will never go away. The voyage continues, and if having the occasional debate with Janus about doorways and tunnels helps, I guess that is what I will have to do right now.

I fear I have gone on longer than I intended, friend. Then again, this is what happens when I have not spoken to you in a year. Imagine that! There is so much to say, so little time; the new year is almost upon us. One thing before the next letter, I have decided to start collecting Legos. It will be a slow process at the start as I am not as financially buoyant as I would like. However, little drops of water and all that jazz. Save for little pockets of capitalism, I had one of my best Christmas weeks this year. Road trip with friends, presents on Christmas morning, and lasagne the day after - a time was had. I hope you were able to enjoy your holidays this year, surrounded by friends and loved ones. Again, if you could not tell by the tone of this letter, I had a better time of it this holiday than the last. Here is a picture from F and I building Legos on Christmas morning whilst being tipsy. (Of course my first Lego sets would be One Piece sets. Don’t act so surprised.)

So… Happy New Year?! For the year I turned thirty (where I wrote you only once) and for the year that comes after thirty (where I hope to write you more). I wish you the resilience to deal with the punches next year, find the courage to take your place in time, and are never far from friends who leave the light on for you. I am not yet as stable as I would like, but as my previous letter to you shows me, some progress has been made. Whoop whoop!! I am not the same man; I contain multitudes; I am still Osondu.

Till next year, my friend. Let’s read more, love more, do more and be more. As always, I look forward to hearing from you. Stay safe.

(By the way, did you see what I did with the title? The question mark? I crack myself up. Let me know if you got it, want to know what it is or I am just being plain silly. Cheers!)

Signing off to Free by Florence + the Machines

“Is this how it is?
Is this how it's always been?
To exist in the face of suffering and death
And somehow still keep singing?”

Sine Cera

Osondu

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