A ship in harbour is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.

This piece was taken from a collection a friend was putting together, provisionally titled ‘Tales from your Twenties’. I was asked to give a short piece of writing, giving advice to people coming into their 20s.

“A ship in harbour is safe, but that’s now what ships are for.”

Five days after my 24th birthday, my brother was taken hostage by Al-Qaeda, and a few days days later, he was killed.  It took us a month to repatriate the body.  At the time, I was living in London, in a happy relationship, in a stable ‘graduate job’, with great prospects.  By the end of that year, I was no longer working, my relationship had fallen apart and I was living in an abandoned hospital.  

By the time the first anniversary of my brother’s death came around, I was in Ioannina, in the mountains of Greece, on the greatest adventure of my life.  I had cycled there from Venice with a friend, down the coast of Italy, before taking a boat to Albania, and trundling happily through the mountains.  We were barely three weeks into what would become a defining phase of my life - the six months I spent on my bike, travelling the Silk Road to Xi’an.  Those first few weeks were hell, and there were times I genuinely wished I would get hit by a car, as it was the only way I could see myself stopping.  

My perseverance paid off though, and having gotten over the doorstep mile, the rest of the trip unfurled before me, every new experience showing me the genuine kindness and hospitality of strangers - admittedly to a white, straight, blonde haired man with an enormous ginger beard.  

Upon returning from that trip, I had an enormous level of self-belief.  If I could cycle to China, what couldn’t I do?  This self-belief led me to take another risk, starting my own tech company - which failed entirely - but being a founder and director of a company taught me so much that is still paying for itself 10 times over today.  

Learning to be good at taking risks is the most valuable thing you can learn to do in your 20s.  It’s something I was bad at when I was younger - in high school, I was terrified of the water, and when we took swimming classes I would cling to the side of the pool, deeply afraid of drowning.  I was shy, and would rarely speak up in class unless it was something I was sure was right.  I barely talked to girls, and can count on two fingers the girls I asked out in high school - both times far later than I should have.  I hid certain aspects of myself from people for fear of not being accepted, and I was not confident in myself.  I was fairly happy, but looking back, I was often anxious and uncomfortable in myself. 

The turning point was finishing high school and deciding to go travelling instead of going to university.   I can’t remember why I decided to go, but I do remember the summer I worked three jobs to pay for it.  When I was travelling, I discovered that I could be whichever version of myself I wanted to be, and I loved it.  

About six months into the trip however, I got a call from my dad that my mum was sick, and that I was coming home the next day.  Confused and scared, I got on the plane and flew halfway across the world to discover that she had terminal cancer, and she died within a week of me getting back.  

In the time between my mum’s death and my brother being killed, I also lost my uncle, a best friend and a cousin.  Although these deaths hit me hard, having struggled with the death of my mum, I was able to handle them.  My brother’s death, on the other hand, was one that really fucked me up, and facing the near total breakdown of my life, I was struck with the idea of a journey, simple in its vision, but challenging in its execution - to cycle the Silk Road, in the steps of Marco Polo.  I was already in a bad situation, and I had everything to gain, so really, what did I have left to lose?

I was brought up in the mountains, and ever since I can remember, I loved going to the woods and streams, to places where I could find solitude.  As I grew, this love of nature grew, and I often took myself away into the wilderness, either on my own or with friends, to find peace.  These pastoral retreats enabled me to better engage with the world, and led to more and more challenging, and often dangerous, experiences, from hiking the South Downs to sailing in the Arctic.  With each new challenge I became more confident in myself, and my ability to handle risk in the outdoors. This certainly led to times where I was out of my depth, such as my failed paddleboarding expedition in Scandinavia, but it always was worth it nonetheless - often in hindsight, for the grounding effect of failure if no other.  

For me, my intimate connection with loss, and my comfort with the outdoors, led to two things.  Firstly, my experience of loss meant that I knew what true suffering really felt like, so the small pains of the day-to-day ceased to have any hold on me, and this led to me not wasting time with things that aren’t important.  Secondly, my experience of the outdoors and expeditions meant that I became very happy with the smallest things, such as finding a patch of cloudberries or finding a particularly good tree to sleep under.  

Being able to focus on big goals, on things that really mattered to me, as well as being comfortable with having very little, meant that I always had to aim high, but if things did go wrong I knew I would be okay.  

Being secure in your ability to have nothing and still be happy, is essential to taking risks - as the biggest risks always mean you’re making a choice where you could lose something.  But risk taking is a virtuous circle.  The more you do it, the more capable you are of doing it, and most importantly, the better you get at it, and in turn this transfers to other aspects of your life.  In the same way that having a strong core will help you with pretty much any sport, being good at taking risks in one area of your life helps you take risks in others.  

I am fortunate that my life, so far, has equipped me with the capacity to take big, calculated risks, and more often than not I’ve come out on top.  Being able to take risks early on in your life, usually when you don’t have a family, or a mortgage, means you are able to find opportunities you never thought possible.  Being bold, but not foolhardy, pursuing the things that matter, and realising you have little to lose will reward you endlessly as you find yourself consistently seeking out and achieving better things in life.  

So, do not be a ship in harbour.  You are capable of riding storms and weathering them, and you will be better for it.