Decades That Roar

Just recently I finished The Fry Chronicles and a particular sentence towards the end struck me with particular force. "My roaring twenties were over". I had just read Stephen Fry's autobiography of his roaring twenties; his life story that took us through uncertainty, to confusion, to ostentatiousness, to exultation, to unequivocal success. The book was justified and (although sometimes too name-dropy) it had something to say, a story to tell.

It made me look at myself, a seventeen year old, and think about what stories I will have to tell when my twenties end. Will they be roaring, like Fry's? He mentions abundantly how lucky he is, but his success is clearly a measure of his talent, focus, and commitment. I look at myself at 17 and realise what I want. I want, by the end of each decade I've been alive, to be able to proudly see it off as a roaring decade.

I have three years left of this decade and, naturally, I haven't done much. One can't do much from the age of 10-17 unless one is a prodigy or one is fearlessly adventurous, courageous, and passionate. I would contend that I have those three qualities, but I can't qualify them as fearless, hence my lack of any obvious roarity yet. But those years of adolescence are defining in their own right, so I shall end this decade with the knowledge that it was satisfactory in moulding me as a person. (Quite an eventful adolescence, too. I've been torn from my friends in England, moved to California where I developed a deep love for the USA, then torn away from that and placed back in England. Plus many other defining, typical adolescent things.)

But I still want to end it with a bang. I admit this 17th year won't hold much for me, but in my last two years of the decade, I want to do interesting things, meet interesting people, set up my twenties for the roaraciousness it deserves.

To hoping my 18th and 19th years are far more interesting than my 15th, 16th, and 17th combined.