FROM THE EDITOR
How many people have you been in your life? I have been about six different versions of myself thus far. There was introverted Farrah, and party animal Farrah, and then, a little after that, pseudointellectual Farrah, who walked around with a copy of French verse hanging out of her jeans pocket ( I know, I know…). I have been a “softer” Farrah at the beginning of my career, and a “tougher, scrappier” Farrah in the middling years. Which one is the real me? The answer is all of them. Because if there are two things we can be certain of in this life, it’s that: one, we will change. Two, we will have no idea we are changing. Take you as you are now. You think you’ll always be this way. You think you’ll always have the general ideas you currently hold about the world. You think you’ll always be a roaring liberal, that you’ll always enjoy romcoms and that you’ll always want to be the life and soul of the party. But you may not. Just as places change, tastes, minds and feelings change, too. It is why grown women weep at the winking dolphin tattoo they got in Ibiza in 1997, and why age-old friendships don’t always last the distance. It is also why some of the strongest marriages eventually fall apart, not because of any malice or lack of love, but because when each party looks at one another, they realise neither of them is the same person they married all those years ago. I had a best friend once – we were so close that on the afternoon I lost my virginity, she took one look at me, smiled and simply said, “You’ve done it, haven’t you?” Now? I don’t even know where she lives. Who changed? The truth is we both did. Little by little, we gently untethered – change, after a while, being the only thing we had in common. In her startlingly honest interview, this month’s cover star, Lily Allen, looks back on the many different versions of herself. From outrageous pop star to country-dwelling mother to who she is now – a quieter, more thoughtful version, perhaps, of the Lily Allen we all think we know. In the face of constant, unstoppable change, how then do you make sure the essence of you stays the same? How do you ensure the decisions you make about your life now are not ones that your future self will come to regret? The best advice I can give is this: you make a rule book, and in that book, give yourself some rules. Decide what decent values you stand for: strength, kindness… it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you use these as a guiding light throughout life. That means that when you change, and you will change, your essential morals do not.
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