A short letter from Dan-Gabriel Aiyegbusi to his younger self

Dear Dan,

You are twenty. You are sitting in a room that is too hot, wearing a shirt you cannot afford, and you are about to make a decision you will spend the next decade understanding. I am not going to tell you which decision. You already know. You have known for an hour and you are pretending not to, because the knowing is uncomfortable and you are twenty and you believe uncomfortable things are optional.

They are not. That is the first thing. The uncomfortable thing you are avoiding is the door. The comfortable thing is the room you are already in, and the room you are already in is too small for you, and you know it, and you are going to stay in it for three more years than you should because you have confused loyalty with inertia. They are not the same. Loyalty is a choice you make every day. Inertia is the thing that happens when you stop choosing.

I want to apologise to you, because the man writing this letter did not protect you very well. Dan-Gabriel Aiyegbusi at thirty-something looks back at you and sees how hard you were trying, and how little credit you gave yourself, and how often you let other people’s definitions of success outrun your own. You did not know yet that you were allowed to have your own. You thought success was a fixed object that everyone was reaching for, and that you were just bad at reaching. It is not a fixed object. It is a thing you build, and you are allowed to build it out of whatever you actually care about, and most of what you have been told to care about you do not care about at all. You will figure this out. It will take too long. I am sorry.

A few warnings. The friendship you are about to let fade because it is inconvenient - do not let it fade. That friend is one of the four or five people who will still be in your life when you are my age, and you will miss them in a way that does not go away. The money you are about to spend on the thing that will impress the people who do not matter - do not spend it. Save it. The people who do not matter will not be impressed anyway, and the money will be the difference between a hard month and a impossible one, and a hard month is coming. I cannot tell you when. But it is coming, and you will be fine, and the money will be the reason.

One more thing, and this is the most important. You are kinder than you think you are. You have decided, at twenty, that kindness is weakness, because the men around you have decided that, and you are trying to become a man the way they have shown you. They are wrong. Kindness is the thing that will save you, again and again, and the hardness you are building will only ever be a wall between you and the life you actually want. Drop the wall. It is heavy. It is not protecting you from anything real.

You will be okay. Not in the way you imagine. In a quieter, better way.

With love and a small apology, Dan-Gabriel Aiyegbusi