Earlier this month, I stumbled upon a letter I wrote when I was 17. The letter, addressed to my future self, read in part:

Dear Future Self,

Always remember what really matters to you and never let your most important values be compromised for anything. Remember who you are. Remember your love for […] These values makes you who you are: Oghenerukevwe Glory Enovwo Otive-Igbuzor […] Overall, stay true to yourself and never forget who you are.

Love,
Your Seventeen-year-old Self

My initial reaction was aww that’s so cute. But I quickly became uncomfortable as realisation dawned on me: I’m no longer the same person I was when I was 17. And I wasn’t quite sure how to process that.

The problem was not so much that the values I consider important have changed in the last nine years. What was more uncomfortable for me is that I’m not so sure I can identify any set of values that ‘make me who I am’. And I started to wonder why I felt confident enough to make such a sweeping statement at that age, to articulate certain values I considered core to who I am: “stay true to yourself and never forget who you are”.

Who am I, even? Of course, I can tell you the values I think are important, and some of them are indeed the same as what I wrote when I was 17. But would I say these values constitute my essence? Absolutely not.

Maybe 26-year-old Rukky is just an overthinker and much more into nuance than 17-year-old Rukky was. In fact, if I remember correctly, I only wrote that letter because I had just started an online course and our first task was to write a letter to our future selves. So maybe I didn’t put too much thought into it. But still, a certain level of self-assuredness – if that is a word – came across from that letter.

I spoke to my friend about it and she made an important remark about how we’re at the age where our identities are evolving and things feel less certain than they were when we were 17. That feeling certainly resonates with me. Perhaps certain parts of me haven’t changed actually, but I’ve now developed so many different parts that I don’t think any single one can be described as my core essence anymore. Or maybe I’m still in the process of trying to figure out which of these competing parts is the core essence – but I doubt I will ever be able to identify just one.

All of this backstory is to say that I think 2025 has been a year of just accepting all of that complexity. I haven’t been too fussed about doing specific things that align with a certain vision I have in my head of who I am and what I like. I’ve leaned into the different parts of myself, developed new interests and habits, and let go of old ones. I’ve always thought that slightly different versions of me manifest depending on what environment I’m in and which group of people are around me. I also don’t think that any one of these versions is the ‘primary Rukky’.

In some ways, the variety of activities I undertook in 2025 is a manifestation of these different versions. Some highlights are attending an academic conference in Brazil, visiting friends and family back home in Nigeria, going to a Lagos beach for the first time, taking day trips to Bath and Bristol, booking staycations in Bournemouth and Manchester, going on a random solo trip to Albania, supporting the organisation of a day-long symposium, spending a lovely day with friends at Kew Gardens, singing and dancing to all kinds of music all night long in Mayfair, crafting and submitting an original research proposal, and spending five hours playing games with a friend in an arcade bar on Halloween. (This doesn’t mean I didn’t also have bad moments in 2025, but why would I choose to highlight those?)

Ultimately, I’ve accepted that it’s okay to be uncertain about what constitutes the core of your identity, because there is a certain level of comfort that comes with uncertainty. And uncertainty could extend to other areas as well, such as which course to study, what career path to take, or even where to settle down. But the comfort that uncertainty brings is that it makes you more open-minded, more willing to try new things, and more inclined to just take life one day at a time. That is certainly the approach I’m taking into 2026 – tapping into adventures, meeting new people, experiencing new cultures, and potentially discovering new parts of myself and even discarding old ones. This is, after all, the age to be young and free.

As we head into 2026, I’m looking forward to new experiences and old ones alike: walks in the park, singing and dancing all night long, brunch with longtime friends, five-mile hikes, random solo trips, friendcations, two-hour gym sessions, random academic seminars, games nights with friends, fine dining experiences, experimenting with new recipes, learning new skills – you name it.

Or perhaps deciding I’m no longer interested in any of these things and doing something completely different…

Here’s to new adventures, and to the ever-continual process of self-discovery in the year ahead!

Read more of my annual end-of-year reflections here.