To My Children

Dear children,

This is one of many letters that I am going to write to you about my experiences and thoughts about the journey we all share called life. Right now you are both quite young and this will not mean anything to you yet, but the time will come when you will see a need to read this.

I hope that when that time comes you will find hope, help, comfort and sustenance in this because I am forever your daddy and love you with a passion that I cannot ever adequately express.

In time you will both be in school and you will encounter the meat grinder we call peer pressure. Your friends and classmates will spend time telling you about themselves and their lives. Some of them will do it in a friendly, open way and others will not.

Some of them will try to influence you to do as they do, to dress as they do, speak as they do and act as they do. Sometimes this can be a good thing and sometimes it can be a bad thing. One of the most important things you can do is learn how to think for yourself and learn how to swim against the tide.

It won't always be necessary nor advisable to go your own way. Sometimes the smart course of action is to do what the majority does and sometimes it is absolutely the worst thing that you can do.

Your mother and I are not going to be there to hold your hand, so you have got to learn how to use your judgement. If we do our jobs you will be able to make those decisions, good, bad, hard or indifferent.

I want you to always remember to never stop learning. A solid, balanced education is critical. It is among the most important things that you can do because it will help provide you with tools that you can forever use.

In the future we are going to talk about your college education and what you need to do to be successful. But long before we get to that point I want you to remember something. Where you start is not as important as where you finish.

That means that if you go to a community college and then transfer to an Ivy league school no one will know that you spent any time at the community college. And for that matter there are advantages to going that route, but we'll talk about that later.

Something else to remember is that reputations are nice but they do not always live up to the hype, there are a lot of factors to consider. By this I mean the reputations that some schools get. They are not always deserved, but again this is a discussion for a later time and place.

For now I look forward to watching you grow and sharing your lives with you. I love you very much.

-Dad