12 Letters to My Future Self - The Project - Letter 1: These are my roots

I am going to write twelve letters to my future self, that I will open every month in 2016. It will allow me to reflect on myself and to help me grow and give purpose to my life, to this year 2015.

Letter 1: These are my roots...

Dear Future Myself,

In one year from now, I would like you to not forget your roots, because they are the corn of your personality. You will change, I hope, but without forgetting your roots. I hope you will have dealt with your past, your original country, the fact that you grew up between two very different cultures. We both know that you felt weird growing up in France, having a Vietnamese education at home.

I hope that you will be okay now that you are unique, and that you won't feel the need to be someone else, to have different roots to have a social contact with someone.

Forgive you parents with sincerity 

I hope you will finally acknowledge that your parents did the best for you, even if they weren't perfect at all. You Dad tried to teach you the importance of being hard-working because he wanted you to be successful, I hope you will understand that he didn't want you to be work-alholic. Stop feeling resentment for being taught that studying was the most important thing on earth, because it helped you in some way to grow, it could have been worse, like you could have had no goal at all. He didn't want to hurt you or to say that you didn't deserve to be alive if you weren't working or studying. He just wanted you to be happy.

I hope you will understand that your Mum didn't want you to be a spoiled kid, but to keep you happy. She wanted you to be happy all the time, she kept you buying things and taking care of you, doing everything. You know it, you won't forget it, right? But my point is, try to not feel resentment because she left you alone. She didn't know she would die, and that you would have to take care of yourself suddenly. She didn't know. I hope you won't think it was her fault that you felt helpless growing up without her. It was just life. Life wasn't unfair. It just wanted you, maybe, to grow up by yourself. Anyways, see her departure, not as betrayal, but as an opportunity to grow. And let it go. It is time to let go. I expect my future self to be okay with the fact that my Mum passed away five years ago. You won't forget it.

Stop feeling resentment towards your parents who stopped teaching you vietnamese. You can learn it by yourself, I am sure that by 2015, you'll be fluent enough to express so simple thoughts in Vietnamese.

Growing between two cultures

I know that growing up in France was in some way really confusing because French people and Vietnamese people didn't have the same beliefs, as regard education and parenting. Will you have dealt with that, Future Myself? I hope you will have. It made you become the person you are today in 2016, and I hope you are proud of you, because there are a lot of reasons to be proud.

Growing up in France taught you to think by yourself. It taught you that you could be selfish, think about your own good, thing that you wouldn't have been really taught if you had had a pure Vietnamese education, because you know that vietnamese people forget themselves, most of the time.



Forgive the mistakes of your education, because they weren't really mistakes, they were challenges that made you the person you are, the person who grew up. Be proud of your roots.


The Old Yourself