A Letter to My Child: On Happiness, Self-Knowledge, and the Weight of Becoming
Glen Amungwa writes to his child with counsel on what truly matters in life: not technology or external validation, but self-knowledge, genuine relationships, and the courage to learn from failure. He frames this letter as a legacy document, passing responsibility forward with both gravity and faith.
[NEW ENTRY] Glen Amungwa dishes out some practical advice on living life in this amazing letter to his child.
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Read Glen's Letter Below. Like and Share if you find his letter inspiring. _______________________________________________________________
Hello there my Hero,
I hope you get to read this letter in time. In time, when you are grown enough to understand the implications of your own actions, and early enough for you to adopt a path of your own, a path to your life.
More than everything, I wish to be there for you, every little step of your life, not to influence your decisions, but to make sure you are guided in the path that will open up true happiness in your life. The type of happiness even I didn’t get to have. Thus, am keeping you this letter, alongside a mass of achievements, people, ideas and much more, in a concrete believe that you make use of them to build a bigger success than I did.
I am therefore passing on the baton to you, the next in line of a legacy, a legacy which will be called by our name. It’s a huge responsibility, but I trust you are a bigger solution. Don’t be fooled. Technology won’t make you happy; neither will social media or success in school, or getting a job, No. True happiness will ultimately lie in your ability to achieve solutions, keeping relationships with family, and finding your own ways to do everything. Don’t just learn things, Develop skills, do things.
Take out time to study yourself. Within you lies so much potential, which even me, your father may not totally comprehend. The success of you becoming that which you are, depends on how well you know yourself, not how well others define what you should be. I have a lot of things I wish you become, so too will so many other people, it’s just normal, and it’s just a wish which should never make you feel any less of what you love to do. So take out plenty of time for yourself, without a phone, or a computer, just yourself, reading a book (I am definitely saving a great collection for you), and more than just making up your mind about who you are, develop what you will do to become that person. Likes and comments on Facebook (I hope they still have this feature when you are reading this) are just a figment of other people’s imaginations, not yours. Define Yourself.
As much as you have control over what you are, there will be moments of stress, which will sometimes overwhelm you. In these moments, be sure to find solace in people who understand and love you. I will be there for you always, but in the case am not, I want you to learn how to build true friendship. Make the best friends out of your family, your mother, and siblings. Give out the best of yourself whenever you are with your friends and yourself. Watch movies on your TV, not on your phone lying in bed, Go out to the market and buy what you need not via a virtual shop, walk up to a girl and ask her out for a date, don’t send a text message.
Most often than not, you are going to make mistakes. Learn how to embrace them. Beyond the embarrassment of failures and mistakes, lies a bank of lessons and experiences which will immensely help to shape the person that you are. I will always be there to help you through for this purpose. As a matter of fact, I am very careful to make sure you have the mother who will equally support you through your mistakes and failures.
I love you very much, above all, I trust you with this heavy responsibility to be the best of what you can be. This letter will not show you or tell you all you need, but within, is a way to discover more out of your own self. You are very unique, above every other person you know. Never forget that. Love, Dad.
This piece emerges from a moment when social media had become deeply embedded in daily life, particularly among younger Cameroonians, yet anxieties about its cost—distraction, comparison, lost interiority—were mounting. The letter form itself, addressed across time, reflects a parent's hope to reach his child at a moment when direct guidance may no longer be possible or welcome.
The letter's insistence on self-knowledge over external definition, on doing over consuming, and on presence over performance reads as urgent counsel amid a decade of accelerating digital life. Its plea to 'walk up to a girl and ask her out for a date' rather than send a text, and to watch films together rather than alone in bed, now carries an almost elegiac weight—a quiet argument for embodied life that has only grown more necessary. The piece also models something rarer in published writing: a man articulating love and responsibility toward his child without sentimentality or performance.