Column 21: On new beginnings

A toast to new jobs, new boyfriends, new homes... and everything else new

The four of us sat down for dinner with the kind of excitement that usually precedes either a confession or a mild disaster. Thankfully, there were no disasters - just news.

It felt almost scripted - like a low-budget, late-twenties version of Sex and the City. Four women, one table, too many shared plates, and enough “So… I have something to tell you” to power an entire season.

One had a new job - she spoke about it carefully, as if it might evaporate if she sounded too confident. We reassured her aggressively, as good friends do; Another had a new boyfriend - the early-stage kind, where everything feels slightly cinematic, insisting it’s “nothing serious,” which is universally recognised as a lie; The third had a new house and became suddenly aware that adulthood is not abstract: it is mortgage-shaped, it requires choosing a sofa and it is (very) expensive; And then there was an engagement: a ring passed around the table like a sacred object. The collective inhale. The delight. The half-jokes about dress codes and open bars that barely disguise the deeper realization: we are old enough now for this to be real.

Between bites of pasta and refilled glasses, it hit me - this is what our late twenties look like. Not tidy, linear and synchronised.

There’s something disorienting about this stage of life. In your early twenties, everyone is roughly in the same place - studying, figuring it out, drifting in parallel. But suddenly, without warning, the paths diverge. The milestones scatter. Life accelerates in different directions.

Comparison becomes tempting. At dinner, though, it didn’t exist. There was no competition, no quiet measurement of who was “ahead.” Only curiosity. Questions. Laughter. The shared understanding that every beginning carries both excitement and terror.

Because here’s the unglamorous truth about new beginnings: they are messy. A new job means impostor syndrome; a new relationship means vulnerability; a new house means unexpected repairs; and an engagement means redefining yourself as part of something larger.

Even the happiest news contains uncertainty. But perhaps that’s what made the dinner feel so charged. We weren’t celebrating arrival. We were celebrating movement. The courage to say yes to something unformed. The willingness to disrupt comfort.

There was a moment - somewhere between dessert and a second bottle of wine - where I looked around the table and felt something rare: pride without envy. A recognition that we are all becoming different versions of ourselves, and somehow still managing to meet in the middle - just four women navigating the strange elasticity of their late twenties stretching into futures that don’t match but still make sense.

We toasted to everything new - and maybe, quietly, to the fact that even as life pulls us in different directions, we still choose the same table.