A letter from Jul 5th, 2021

Dear Nam, I’m Nam from the past, pen-ultimate high school student and currently 17 years old. It’s the 5th of July, 2021 and exactly one month before my 18th birthday. The world just went out of a crisis by vaccinating and we’re in the post-pandemic phase. You’re currently on your second week of the last summer vacation and have planned to learn throughout the holidays to perform excellently in class 12. You even have created an Excel to track your time and developed a detailed study plan that you don’t stick to and execute haha. According to your contemporary plans, you should have already obtained a Bachelor’s degree in business administration and work at a management consultancy for roughly 2 years now, if everything is going well. Optionally, you are at the end of Master’s degree and applying for entry-level positions. The brand-names of McKinsey and the University of Mannheim were your biggest drivers from class 10. I’m so curious to know what your current drivers are in 2026 and which challenges you faced and burdens you had to overcome to be who you are today. But as of now, it’s impossible to gain the answer because you’re the only one who knows it and I should be grown now and trapped into your body. You held many things against your parents because they couldn’t afford you participating to social life in full dimensions despite of all efforts. You partly blamed them for your social incompetence and always led it back to mistakes they did in your childhood cause they didn’t knew it better. You heavily insulted your mum for temporarily being unemployed and your dad to be part of the worker class. But would you do the same for your son or daughter what they did for you? Or is accumulating capital your one and only plan? … How do you stay to your parents now? Would you immediately abandon your career to care for your parents in worst case as Bác Thanh did for grandma who left us about 3 months ago? Whatever you do right now … Frankly, I only hope that you’re happy and live without any onerousnesses. Maybe you went an entirely different path than you’ve planned from 2019 that I can’t even imagine and think of. Another thing I want is that you will never regret anything retrospectively. For the moment of decision, it was the right and the best for you, whether it was a rational decision, from your mind, from your heart or entirely impulsive. The future is exciting.