I have not been leaving the apartment much this year.
I’ve been seeing my friends and the pub less, and have been existing in what I can only describe as a very sensible routine. Big nights are scarce, and I’m mindful of being in a lucid way for Honi layup on Sundays. My meals are budgeted and planned, and I’ve been eating more recipes with chickpeas in them than ever before. I have been trying to take omega 3s and wear my retainer.
Recently, I thought to myself: am I becoming heinously boring?
A few weeks ago I sunk into my pillows and watched The Bling Ring, a femme heist film, based on the true story of Alexis Neiers, which follows a clique of LA teenagers who sneak into, and rob, the opulent Calabasas homes of celebrities like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. Experiencing risk vicariously in such a way did not deliver the satisfaction it used to.
There are more layers to risk-taking as a young person in 2024. Travelling, or going on exchange — oft marketed as a prolific university experience — is incredibly expensive and largely unattainable for most people I know. I’m awfully suspicious of how it still manages to be marketed as a quintessential experience. Risks of this kind are a privilege.
In this economy, if you have an appetite for risk, you must challenge its meaning – rethink risk to encompass something else. When I told the Honi reporter group that this edition would be risk-inspired, I encouraged them to think beyond being handed their first joint.
Cheap risks were everywhere in adolescence: your first kiss, laughing with villainous glee while doing knock and runs. There were still foods you were yet to try, fashion experiments to attempt and visibly fail.
We are lucky, then, that a largely inexpensive way to exercise risk is through writing. In pitching for Honi you take a risk. In writing, you risk. In submitting an assignment, you take a risk. In an interview for The Guardian, Annie Ernaux said, “if it’s not a risk then it’s nothing.” This mantra has rattled in my mind since.
I’d like to thank all the contributors for composing such thoughtful pieces for the Risk edition. Honi has chronicled risks since 1929.
And to the reader, go ahead and take one.
