An Open Letter To My Potential Future Child (If Ever)

I’ve been here 19 months exactly (the 17^th of June 2012 was my first day at the office). I’ve lived through the presidential elections, two constitutional referendums, a re-run of the Revolution and a military coup. I’ve had about 14 flatmates from 5 continents (and still counting), and countless couch surfers, some of whose names I don’t even remember. I’ve had colleagues from 15 countries and have worked with people from many other countries still. I’ve seen friends come and go, become depressed, get better and sink back down into the void again. I’ve walked deserts, and swam seas. I have traveled to 9 countries. I have seen drama and I have seen indifference. I’ve seen incredible pain and profane ugliness, I’ve seen riches and rags. I’ve seen monuments of humanity’s cultural heritage and inhumane devastation. I have been abused physically and orally. I have also been praised and appreciated in ways I had never been praised before. Alexandria is a place where extremes meet like nowhere else. I have been tested and I have become stronger.

In four days I will be 29 years old. Many would say: this is nothing, and maybe in 10 years from now, my advice to you would be different. But walking to work yesterday morning on the Corniche, as I often do, a realization dawned on me with a sudden undeniable force: there is only one substantially stable thing in this world, and that thing is the Sea. Whatever you do in your life, whoever you choose to be and wherever you choose to go, try to live by the sea. I guess a big old Forest would also do the trick (preferably one with Redwoods or other trees majestic enough to knock the socks off your feet) or some serious Mountains. All of these would probably work the way a great force of Nature works on us. Yet the Sea has a quality which makes it distinctly unique: the power to cleanse. And, although all water has this power, I don’t think even the most immense River or Lake would be able to substitute the effect the open Sea or Ocean has on us. That power only a truly great body of water has: the power to overwhelm you, to crush you and to illuminate you - all at once. To calm and soothe you the way is calms and soothes me every morning. On the eve of my 29th birthday, this is the only advice I have for you: Live by the Sea.

"The Sea," from Morcheeba's album "Big Calm"