Earn this

Around 30 of us gathered in a semicircle beneath a tree planted conspicuously in the heart of the Oxford business school courtyard. It was an unusually blue-skied September. Some of us were still slightly hungover from the night before, faces tinged with the red of little sleep. They were the same faces I saw laughing and dancing in some dingy Oxford nightclub just six hours earlier—bow ties unraveled and bottles of tequila being passed around—but here now in the arresting sobriety of our Sunday chinos, shirts, and designer glasses. The mood was now somber. Many of the faces were wet with tears.

We were a decade older now. A decade more humbled by life’s challenges. A decade of that great soup of experience—the choices, the scars, the joys—all combined into what we each call our life. There were a few more wrinkles; some of us had added kids and a few wild adventures to our stories, but in that moment, we stood arm in arm. Quiet. Still. Heads bowed.

We were gathered around the tree to remember a friend who was no longer with us. Beneath it, a plaque read: "Luke Holland: 1984-2015. You brought us joy and left us in sadness. MBA 2013/14."

Luke had been killed by an unhinged gunman in Berlin just months after we completed our MBA. He was leaving a nightclub in the early hours when a man, upon hearing him speak English, shot him randomly in the street. It was a senseless act of hatred that’s still hard to comprehend.

The memorial felt unpracticed, unprecedented, and slightly awkward, yet it was an achingly beautiful conclusion to a weekend filled with reconnection and love. Its depth of darkness only accentuated the light we bring into each other's lives. This group of people, now some of my closest friends, had become brothers and sisters over the years. But we were missing one.

Some of us took turns sharing memories of Luke—a man of character, joy, and a quiet, avuncular calm, whose absence weighed heavily on all of us. He was never at the center of things during our year, never needing to be in the spotlight to love and be loved. As the stories were shared, voices faltered, and we felt the collective pain. Then, once those who needed to speak had spoken, we hugged and said our goodbyes, returning to our scattered lives around the world. Some of us won't see each other for another five years—or even 10; others will see each other next weekend. But we will forever be tied together, not just by the experience we shared those 10 years ago, but even more deeply by the shared grief we feel at the loss of our friend, whom we now only see in our memories.

A year after Luke’s death, a few of us wanted to honor his legacy and find a way to process our grief. We started writing annual essays to one another titled "Earn This," a reference to Captain Miller’s last words to Private Ryan in Saving Private Ryan as his life faded away on the bridge in the Battle of Ramelle.

In these essays, we take stock of our lives—our relationships, careers, dreams, and hopes. Some years are lighter, others more difficult. But it’s the act of reflection that matters most. As I prepare to write mine for this year, I’ve been revisiting the earlier ones. In the beginning, they were full of ambition, focusing on what I still wanted to achieve, what I felt I had to prove. I was confident then—sure of my ability to shape the world, convinced I could achieve whatever I set out to. In recent years, though, the tenor of these essays is less definitive—less about goals, a little more reflective and mostly, just about relationships.

When it gets down to it all, having met many ambitious people over my life and encountered that ambitious spirit in myself, it’s occasions like this that make us realise that achievement means nothing but for the people such ventures bring into our lives and the ineffable knowledge that one day we won't have them with us to share it. My life has become less about being at the center and more about an ever widening circle, of people I love, just like the one gathered around the tree on that September Sunday morning under that blue Oxford sky.

We have Luke to thank for that.