A letter from April 29th, 2020

Dear FutureMe, Aaron Williams 1400 John R. Lynch St Jackson, MS 39217 214.288.1031 Aaron.d.williams@students.jsums.edu 19 April 2020 Future Me 1400 John R. Lynch St Jackson, MS 39217 Dear Aaron, I first want to congratulate you on the man that you’ve become and the man that you’re becoming. Coming up you were a troubled child due to the environment you were in. You were never a bad child, just one who needed guidance in the right direction. Do you remember the time that you were stealing and got caught up? It could’ve been avoided, but you made the decision to go down that road and bring those problems upon yourself. You know it was wrong, and you still made that action to make a bad decision and you then had to deal with the consequences. It all could have been avoided had you did the right thing. I next want to remind you that as a man you need to stand on integrity and respect your moral values. A man of your skin complexion is already looked at a certain way so doing the right thing could take you a long way. Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions. Integrity can stand in opposition to hypocrisy, in that judging with the standards of integrity involves regarding internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that parties holding within themselves apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter their beliefs. Be compassionate and considerate to others and be careful how you treat them because you never know what type of things that they are battling in their own personal life. Compassion motivates people to go out of their way to help the physical, mental, or emotional pains of another and themselves. Compassion is often regarded as having sensitivity, an emotional aspect to suffering, though when based on cerebral notions such as fairness, justice, and interdependence, it may be considered rational in nature and its application understood as an activity also based on sound judgment. There is also an aspect of equal dimension, such that an individual's compassion is often given a property of "depth", "vigor", or "passion". Having morality as a black man could empower so many lives in the eyes that are watching you when you aren’t looking. Morality is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper and those that are improper. Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion or culture, or it can derive from a standard that a person believes should be universal. Morality may also be specifically synonymous with "goodness" or "rightness". The last thing that I want to tell you is to prosper in whatever you are doing. You can do whatever it is you please to put your mind to as long as you work for it. The money is out there for you to get but you have a short time at life to run it up in the safest, most fun, and honest way possible. Stay humble bro! Sincerely, Aaron D. Williams