Dear Jiajia, I expect you will be able to read this letter in at least ten years. Ten years, what a long time! Along with all the replies your father has received, his letters are the most valuable gift you will ever have. Ten years seems to be something of a long journey on the ocean, so slow that you long to see the destination, but when you look back, it becomes a lightning splitting the clouds, so fleet that the first minute you look at it, the next it vanishes.
Ten years will slip away if you goof around. It will also fly away if you fill it with tears, laughter, defeat, and triumph. There are not many "ten years" in our lives. Live out your days, or you will regret squandering time when one day you grow white hairs. The first ten years is the gold, shining with the curious and the carefree. Yet, life is mysterious. No one is for sure what will happen by then. Whatever it may happen, Jiajia, there lies a great unknown world behind the mystery. Only the most courageous people could go into it and get out what they want. It is not easy, though. You can make it easier, however, by working hard and grabbing opportunities. Here is the key to the unknown world: You get out what you put in. After the first ten years, you will begin to really see things around you with your growing mind. They may not as good as you expect, some amiss, some unreasonable. Discouragement, disillusionment, and failure may hang over your little heart. But, you know, those comprise one part of life. Another part includes encouragement, hope and success. We need both parts as the Earth needs both hemispheres. Lack of either part will make life incomplete. So it's usual to have discouragement from others, but unusual to neglect encouragement around you. You may feel sad to know some of your dreams will not come true, but be happy to know there is still hope with you, empowering you to have more dreams. You also know this old proverb, "Failure is the mother of success." You will also begin to make friends. Friendship is rewarding, but there is a kind of friendship more treasurable than any of the other. No matter who and wherever you are, it will never betray you and always be loyal to you. It accounts for your success and failure and gives you comfort whenever you feel sad. What is it? It's friendship from you. Befriend yourself. You are the only one who knows what you think and feel, who is responsible for your appearance and for what you do. You can therefore know every part inside you. To be friends with yourself helps you be yourself and be aware of being lost in crowds. You don't need to satisfy every one around you, for you are different from others. There is one person you have to listen to, however. He is the self in you. I am concluding this letter with a quote, which I like very much, from an email sent by one of my friends. "Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By doing so, I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts. I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests.
I know that there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know. But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for the solutions to the puzzles and for to find out more about me.
However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is me. This is authentic and represents where I am at that moment in time.
When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did, and how I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting, and keep that which proved fitting, and invent something new for that which I discarded.
I can see, hear, feel, think, say and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me and therefore I can engineer me."
My very best wishes for you,
Sincerely yours,
Jenny, your father's young net-friend
