Stephen Fry’s letter to his sixteen-year-old self has been getting a lot of traffic and comments over at the Grauniad, somre touching, some silly. So the question is, what would you advise your teenage self with the benefit of 5, 10, 15, 20 or even more years of hindsight? Matters of the heart in all their myriad forms loom large in a great deal of the advice, along with fewer drugs (of both the legal and illegal varieties). I am not sure I would advise anything – on the one hand, life has to be lived in all its glory – pain and misery are tempered by moments of beauty or absolute calm, and on the other I am not really sure I have changed that much – maybe my abilities to build facades to hide behind and to bite my tongue have strengthened. The only other thing would be to not give up on maths – it brings me so much pleasure nowadays after re-immersing myself after a ten year gap.
