When my mother died in 2004, I tried to summarize what my parents had given me in five words.
Devotion—Lễ.
Nghĩa—the sacred duty born of love, sacrifice, and honor.
Compassion—Nhân.
Integrity—Tín.
Courage—Chí.
I was thirty-one.
More than twenty years later, writing this book, I realized I was trying to do something similar again.
I was asking:
What did I inherit?
What did life teach me?
What is worth carrying forward?
But there is something I understand more clearly now.
Inheritance is not a list of instructions.
My parents gave me values. They also gave me enough strength to make choices they would not always have made themselves.
I hope I can give you the same.
There are things I hope you keep.
Care deeply about something worth doing. Work hard because opportunity deserves effort, not because exhaustion is a virtue.
Keep yourself capable. Keep learning. Stay curious. Understand enough of the work to respect what you ask of others.
Share what you know. What you know makes you capable. What you share makes you influential.
And when you see capability in someone else, give it a real chance. Give people something that matters, support them through the stretch, then let the accomplishment become theirs.
If you do this long enough, something wonderful happens. The people you once taught begin teaching you. Your children may see something you missed. Your grandchildren certainly will. Listen to them.
That is not a failure of what you passed down. It is the point of passing it down.
And know what enough means. Ambition matters. Financial security matters. But do not become so good at pursuing more that you forget to ask what the more is for.
And then there are things I hope you change.
There were beliefs my parents carried that I questioned.
There are beliefs I carry that you should question too.
I cannot tell you which ones.
If I already knew where I was wrong, I would try to correct it myself.
That responsibility belongs to you.
Do not reject something simply because it is old.
Do not preserve something simply because it is ours.
Understand where it came from.
Ask whether it is still worthy.
Keep what is.
Change what is not.
And add what my generation could not see.
I hope you discover better ways to think, work, lead, love, and live.
I hope some of what I have written helps.
I also hope some of it eventually becomes obsolete because you have learned something better.