You were born on 6/17/2026. I couldn’t remember the weather that day because I was locked in the hospital with your mom from 2 AM, but it must have been a beautiful day.
I’m writing this article on 9/8/2026 10pm, and the trigger was an incident from yesterday. Your mom and I have already taken so many pictures of you. We printed them out, and wanted to build an album. The idea was to write notes on the back of each photo, with backstories of the picture, how we felt when taking the picture, what the mood was when taking the photo. etc. So when you grow up, you can read the messages and feel our love. Your mom crushed the exercise, she could constantly write so many things picture by picture. After like 10 minutes, she finished 20 of them. But looking at my table, I barely wrote three of them, and after wracking my brain, I couldn’t figure out what to put in the fourth one. I put down the pen, started making excuses - the marker was too thick, or I didn’t like the color. But it triggered me to think, I realized I actually wanted to give you something else. I wanted to write something that you can use when you grow up, I wanted to write well polished and thought articles that contain my experience, wisdom, so you can borrow from. So I returned the pictures to your mom, and decided to write a series of articles starting today. I will give you my thinking in life, my thoughts on what I think is important to a human. I plan to give you this treasure box when you need them, maybe 12, maybe 15 or 18.
Pausing right here, by the time you read this, you probably already learned a lot of things, and most likely are a fluent English reader and writer. You might start to doubt the quality of this series of articles, given this exact one you are currently reading is clunky. I might not write in proper grammar and vocabulary. And let me be honest, before today, I had never written any articles. Not the short ones, not the long ones. I hated writing when I was at your current age. But the older I grow, the deeper I feel that writing is such an important skill to have. Plus I’m still not a fluent English speaker/writer. Plus I’m not so great at communication, logic. However, I don’t think I will be always like this. I can grow and learn, just like you. I’m starting to learn writing and improving my English. I’m 32 years old, many people would laugh at me, they might say it’s too late for me to learn writing, they might bet I won’t last long. They might think I’m a joke. But my son, you will see, when you read an article or an essay that I write months or years later, you will tell the difference, you will know I learned a lot, and that will be the first wisdom I want to give to you: the power of persistence.
Love, Dad
