BLOG SPOT with Gary Latham

TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF 2021. An open letter to anyone under 25, who is ready to live.

Sorry, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen with the road map out of lockdowns, but I can tell you it’s time to stop worrying about it. For all those teens and twenty somethings feeling like they have been robbed of time, freedom and opportunity stop looking backwards and forge forward.

You see everybody wastes one year in their lives, at least. I know I did after giving university a half-arsed effort, dropping out, meandering through serial jobs, and trying my hand at stand-up. Funnily enough, it is these “wasted” years that we discover so much about ourselves. These “gap” times away from our conventional career paths, or times when we are mending after someone has smashed our hearts into a Billion Trillion tiny pieces or trying to find a skerrick of fairness in life, after the untimely loss of a close friend or relative.

These are the times when you find out who you really are, you find out everything about yourself, positive and negative. It is these rich times that you will remember most when you are older. My grandfather entertained me with great stories of cutting hair in his backyard during The Great Depression. He made me think barbering was even cooler than it is today.

Jayne’s mother lived through the Blitz in London and had her bedroom ceiling fell in on her and her sister. Later they would be evacuated to the country to live off a rationed diet of boiled water, stock cubes and a slice of bread. These times made them the people they would become, and the stories are always delivered with a huge laugh. Their generation is full of the some of the toughest and most amazing people in history. You may scoff now, but Covid has been your gift, a once in a lifetime opportunity. What fun is life when it is simple and easy. How much better do you know yourself now after going through it? You know your limits or even that limits no longer exist for you. If I can get through this, I can get through anything.

After this storm is over, reset and get ready for the surge. Travel has not been cancelled forever, only held back and the dam is about to burst. As we have lived life indoors and isolated, be ready for the joy and veuve of creative people cherishing what they had been denied. As the 1950’s and 60’s was a time of creativity, dreams, and love, giving us The Beatles, Sassoon’s, and Woodstock, the 2020’s and 30’s will be break-out decades. Your Golden decades. At your age you have time on your side to do fabulous things! Make plans, live your dreams, that will be all the sweeter after Covid-19. Times have changed and businesses will not be operating in the same manner. Industries have died out and new ones sprouted. When was the last time you used cash or read a newspaper? Pre Covid had you ever held a Zoom meeting or scanned a QR code? Change brings opportunity, be ready for it and embrace it. The faster the change the greater the opportunities. Your imagination is the vehicle of change and your drive is its fuel.

So, my young lucky friend, if you’ve managed to read this far well done, you’ve impressed me. I hope you are thinking “you are full of shit old man”. Well done, that is what self-discovery is all about.

Take what advice you like and work the rest out for yourself. I’ll be proudly watching for when you make your mark on the world, or quietly laughing if you stuff it up.