Dearest future self

I wish I could see you as vividly as I see my reflection in the mirror. I wish you were here. Right now. I wish you could hear me as clearly as I hear my thoughts. Technology has not yet provided the tools for me to reach out to you in the future, and neither have you succeeded in reaching me in the past. Therefore, this letter must suffice. There are things you must know, and if there is anyone on this planet that you cannot afford to ignore, it is me.

Even though you are me, I do not know you, and I don’t know whether you will remember me. I am still a young man, barely experienced in life. My thickening black beard now fully covers my chin, a chin that has still not yet suffered a direct punch. My taupe-coloured hair has also not yet started receding away from my generously proportioned East-African forehead. With each day that I spend in the gym, my form continues to grow as quickly as my mind once did when I lived in the libraries. Although my voice is still sharp and unafraid to offend, I have long sheathed my rapier, and I no longer attack my debaters as ferociously as I used to. And yes, unfortunately, it is still the case that the pigments in my skin have been the defining object of my person ever since I set foot upon this British island. Not the vastness of my imagination nor the quality of my character, not the poetry of my speech nor the warmth of my heart, not the eccentricity of my chess, nor the stories that I tell whenever an excellent drink dispels my sobriety. No, it is my ‘blackness’. They still approach this natural pigment with a strange reluctance, as if I am a haunted mannequin, bound in some ghastly black leather, which may unleash an ancient curse if they meddled with it. A blackness that nature’s tender hands has gifted as protection from the unforgiving tropical sun.

Perhaps you are still like me. A melancholy creature, draped in some old-fashioned 2040s graphene fabrics that are the unripped jeans of today, betraying your unending unwillingness to fully embrace the world you should inhabit. I wonder, did your frantic post-PhD speculations of some crypto and quantum space turn you into a prosperous merchant, or did some unwise investment condemn you into a village beggar? Did your passionate desire for social progress cast you into a revolutionary, or into a career politician? Or should I address you as ‘His Excellency General of the Army’, a worthy rank bestowed upon you by the Prime Minister of the Greater East-African Colony, after your victorious campaigns in the Afro-China liberation war? Sorry about losing your arm General, but I’m sure the mechanical replacement is far superior! Or perhaps you are now a cybernetically enhanced android, long transhuman, pouring through this text in a femtosecond as you scour through the Martian internet.

Sir, General, Android, or Professor…the sun is now thawing the British winter away, a winter whose frost had never disturbed us in Kakamega. Do you remember the neighbour’s guava trees that were generous throughout the year? Do you remember River Isiukhu, whose waters always received us with open arms when, as jolly little lads, we plunged into it? Do you recall the hilarious violence that would be dispensed by your loving mother whenever you returned home after these forbidden swims? Maybe we should have stayed there. Home is where life is most beautiful. But the winters on this part of the British island are not harsh. There are no feet-deep snowfalls for me to wade through. We don’t even get enough snow on these barren fields to fill the palm of a child and be moulded into a projectile. Ours is merely a winter of long nights and cold winds. But autumns are always beautiful!

The choices that I have made, and the luck that I have been given, so far, have preserved me from many troubles, and my woeful recollections are certainly few. I have been loved more times than I have been rejected. I have rejoiced more passionately than I have wept. I have fallen in love more times than I have fallen out of it, and I have avoided the knives of jilted lovers that would have been plunged into my neck. And unlike many of my comrades, I have also been spared from the unwanted children that often follow from our youthful capricious fornications.

Although the sounds of machinegun fire still rent through a Westgate mall here or a Garissa University there, your country is still largely at peace as I have not yet heard of mortar shells tearing through the roof of my mother’s house. I must also add that despite its impressive efforts, poverty has also failed to deny me an education, and as I write this, I am looking through the window of a spacious, old-fashioned room, perhaps nearly 500 years old, overlooking the pristinely cut lawns of the best University in the world. As I run my eyes along its light-blue, pan pair curtains, illumined by the mild splendour of a sun that brings the promise of spring, I cannot help preserving this moment like a save point in a video game. I have surely had happier memories, but this is my moment of perfect balance, straddled between a life somewhat well lived and another waiting to be lived.

I wish I could solicit your advice on how I should live onwards. So far, I have had much mental anguish growing old, drifting through my youth without a proper rulebook of life. I have survived my teenage years, thankfully, but now, I don’t really like this new thing called adulthood. Yes, it has its freedoms and luxuries, but I feel that the perils are manifold, and that I am still unprepared for this, a whole decade in.

But I swear I have done my best for you, so far. I have deployed my juvenile years to learning and discarding the dogmas that were so relentlessly decanted into my brain. As you should, I have held my head high amidst the scandalous stories that were flung about me. Surely, someone should tell these people that there’s nothing scandalous about discarding religions, and the efficiency this brings to how one views the world is beyond compare! I have also fashioned a worthy pursuit for myself that can distract me from self-destruction: the pursuit of science!

I have also looked into the depths of love, both through the eyes of others and through my own, and I have discovered mechanisms of fanning the rich embers therein or extinguishing the violent fires that often emerge from it, fires that have singed many souls. And if there were any closets in my house, neither I nor any skeletons linger there. As for the other tales, of loves lost or passions discarded, of friendships and enmities unfurled, of betrothals declared or engagements abandoned, my only regret is the terrible scarcity of such tales: many men my age have surely lived far more adventurous lives.

Yet, I do not despair. I no longer race against others; my only adversary is myself. I do not care for a wine glass for the bottle fits so naturally in my hand. I am also unfazed by the world, and for this, I am not sure whether to rejoice or bewail. I can now sleep as soundly on a velvet bed as upon a freshly covered grave. Likewise, I imagine that if the pain could be kept at bay, a knife plunged into my chest would be merely a nuisance; I no longer dread the approach of death. Although I desire immortality, in my living I have learnt how to die, and the funerals I have avoided or attended in my short life have convinced me that the inevitable is not to be feared but to be prepared for.

However, there is something that I deeply fear. I fear that despite everything I have done so far to prepare you for the future, it may not be enough, and that you may fuck everything up. I fear that by some little mistake, you may plunge from the ladder of promise straight into the pits of obscurity. It is not that you are not allowed to make mistakes. No. You are free to make them. You are free to spread your wings even wider, and soar like Icarus close to the sun. You are free to fall freely in love, and to cast yourself into the vales of this strange world. You are free to cherish your brotherhood with the children of the earth, to commune with the Russians and the Irish as you measure the vigour of your youth by your resilience against bottles of vodka. You are free to delve into the dimly lit dungeons of London and to lose yourself in the streets of Paris.  After all, I am unable to stop you, and surely no one should.

But consider the bus driver revving his engine at the edge of a flooded road in Kitui. He wants to get to the other side, and he has seen a few cars before him plunge headlong into the waters, which seem a little shallow anyway, and emerge unscathed on the other side. But deep down, the bus driver knows that the consequences of speeding into the deceptively shallow waters of a flooded road may be mortal. Mortal not only for himself but also for the passengers who are naively urging him on. It is this moment, the seconds of contemplation before he stamps onto the gas and signs his death certificate, that fills me with dread. Logic and reason may not always come to our aid, to remind us when to grab life by the collar and when to show restraint. Therefore, I wish I could solicit your advice, for I do not yet know where living life ends and where risking it begins.

Regardless, I wish you well my dear friend. I hope that you find good things in life and that you manage to keep them. I hope that your woeful recollections will remain few and that your miseries will never disturb your slumber. I hope that you will always find amusement in this absurd life, and that as you shun suffering and pursue pleasure, you will forge beautiful memories whose stories will warm the hearts of your fellows as you gather around fires. I hope that your friendships will be passionate and exhilarating and that your enmities will be zestful. I hope that you will not regret devoting yourself to science, and that its full and abundant supply of beauty and wonder will never run dry. And finally, I hope that you will become a man that I may want to be.

No pressure.

Best,

You.

V