Letters from Darren · Introduction

Why These Letters

I started writing because I knew there would come a day when someone I love might want to ask me a question and I would not be there to answer it.

That thought became For Those Who Come After Us. I could not leave an answer for every situation, so I tried to leave some of the thinking that helped me find my way.

But writing a book taught me something else: the thinking does not stop when the book is finished.

Life keeps adding new evidence. My children teach me things I did not understand when they were younger. Work presents problems that make an old principle look different. Technology changes the choices in front of us. A conversation with someone from another field can expose a connection I had missed for years.

Sometimes an idea becomes stronger. Sometimes it needs to be revised. Sometimes the most useful thing I can say is that I am still working through the question.

That is what these Letters are for.

They are a place for ideas that are alive: stories, observations, questions, connections, and lessons I think may be worth carrying forward. Some will come from family. Some from leadership, technology, public service, failure, travel, or people I did not expect to teach me. The useful ones will rarely stay confined to the place where I first found them.

I do not expect you to agree with every Letter.

I hope you do something better with them.

Use what helps. Question what does not. Connect it to what you already know. Improve it when your experience gives you a reason to. Then, when you find something worth preserving, pass that forward too.

That is the larger idea behind The Way.

We should not try to give the next generation a finished script. We should give them a stronger starting point.

These Letters are one way I can keep adding to that starting point while I am still here to learn, revise, and listen.

— Darren