my dear son,
YYou won’t remember the first word you said. no one does but i do It was small, cracked, almost reluctant. Like the world you had to convince to take that first breath. I stood waiting. And when it came, it wasn’t a winner.
It was people.
That voice never left me. It lives behind everything you say. As a lamp is carried through the fog, I bring it—uncertain of the ground, still moving forward.
When I think of you now, big and restless, I hear that first cry again, except softer. You’re searching for your own air, examining what it means to breathe in a world that promises no mercy. The world will not explain you. It wouldn’t make sense, not quite. It is the place of a moving shadow, half-north, and finely clothed hunger. Still, money is possible there too. Maybe not clarity, but something like direction.
You once asked me if I believed in God. I said I did, which is true. This belief is what keeps me going. It’s a memory of faith, worn and bruised, the kind that lives on even after the knees go. I tell you this because of the name that has followed me forever—Chimamanda. If my mother were alive today, she would teach me this word, even though I am not hers. He wanted the Word to live on, even in a man. My God will not fail me. I have spent my life testing its truth. Sometimes I think it’s true because we must act like it. Faith, son, is effort to walk if there is no clear path.
You live in a time where everyone pretends certainty is strength. They talk about goals and progress, dreams hard on screens and resumes. But certainty is a fragile god. Cracked in the rain. It cannot contain the grief or the silence that follows it. You learn this when you lose someone you love — not by distance, but by death or misunderstanding. Only then will you see what it means to live without guarantees.
When I was your age, I thought patience was strength. I thought it was enough to survive. There’s a kind of dignity in just not falling, yes, but it’s a cold dignity. Over the years, I’ve learned that enduring is only half of surviving. The other half is being open, being permeable to joy, kindness, even naïve hope. As the years accumulate, these things will try to slip away from you. Hold them. They make weight bearable.
Beckett once wrote that we move forward because there is no other choice. He’s right, but that’s not the whole story. we go with moneyEven if it means we innovate to stay upright. There’s a strange nobility to this – because inventing when nothing is given. That is faith, stripped of religion, naked and raw. Maybe that’s what my name always implies.
My father never told me about his pain. People of his time mistook silence for knowledge. He built walls instead of sentences. I inherited both. It took half a lifetime to realize that walls don’t protect; They are isolated. You build them up, thinking they’ll keep the world at bay, but in the end you find they only keep you at bay. So I write this letter as a small act against his silence. I’m writing because you deserve a father who tells the truth — not to chastise, but to prepare.
You will fail many times. Some failures will carve you open; Others will whisper and quietly rot inside you. The first impulse would be to hide them. everyone does But don’t. Failure, for all its stench and heaviness, holds something clean beneath it. It strips pretend. It reminds you of limits, but also of possibilities. To fail honestly is to risk becoming completely human.
When I was twenty-five years old, I believed that the world would recognize me. I was waiting for proof that my life mattered. It never came. And in that long wait, I almost forgot how to live without it. But one night I whispered the name while sitting under the dim light in a small room. Chimamanda. Not as a prayer. Not as ordered. Just a reminder: My God will not fail me. I didn’t mean it as victory. I call it patience. I keep saying it until it sounds less like a declaration and more like a breath. My faith shrunk that night, small enough to fit into a normal day—the kind of faith that doesn’t need glasses to survive.
You may feel the fire of faith. Sometimes it is. But more often it’s ash—the quiet warmth that lingers after the bright finish. That warmth, however small, is enough to keep you human. Remember that.
You once told me you wanted to change the world. a great dream I appreciate it. But remember, the world changes faster than you change it. Do not resist it too fiercely. Let the world mark you. Let it get you through the seasons of loss and pity. Meaning grows out of the dirt of ordinary things: holding a hand longer than necessary, softly speaking a hard truth, insisting on getting back up after embarrassment. This is the small fire we live in.
Like Beckett’s characters, you’ll be tempted to wait for clarity, for the ideal moment when everything lines up. That moment doesn’t exist. Start anyway. Love anyway. Failed anyway. This is your act of bravery. The world owes you nothing, but that doesn’t exempt you from giving. Giving without purpose, building without certainty—this is how the silent revolution begins.
It was not easy to learn. There were many nights when I said the name like it was a curse. When the idea of an infinite God seemed cruel. Those nights have their place too. They polish you in a strange way. You wake up less hungry for control. You learn to live with the mystery, not as an enemy, but as an old neighbor who never leaves. Humility grows in that proximity.
Now I am grown up. My hands are shaking, not from age, but from trembling. I am writing this letter not to instruct, but to leave a mark. If a sentence outlives me, let it be: Faith is not certainty; It is stubborn faith in the face of silence. You can forget everything else. That, I hope, you remember.
Chimamanda – The name itself sounds like a breath of promise. Not loud, not startling, but a steady whisper in the throat of time. The world will fail you in small ways every day. People will fail you, so will I. But this name, this concept, carries within it a quiet refusal to let despair be the final word. It means that even if you’re sitting in the rubble, there’s still a pulse beneath the rubble, still a reason to get up.
You, son, are not bound by the faith of your ancestors, but you are invited to its endurance. It is a legacy worth keeping – not dogma, but perseverance. No matter how tenuous the desire to be close to the pulse of man. You will lose and forget, fall and recover. will doubt you will be sad But somewhere in between these tasks, you will survive. And if I’ve taught you anything, let it be this: even the tiniest of lives have room for eternity.
I hope you read this not as instruction but as companionship. You and I are traveling the same crooked road, just to different points. There will be days when you think I don’t understand you, and you’ll be right. There will be others when you miss my voice, and I wish I spoke more clearly. That broken father-son conversation—always half-heard, always incomplete. But underneath it all, love remains. Not the sensitive kind, but the calm, sustainable kind that lurks inside the focus.
Tonight I imagine you sitting somewhere, thinking about your own name, wondering what it might mean. I imagine you laughing, or silent, or angry at something that refuses to bend. I won’t ask you to pray, but I will ask you to notice. Notice what endures in spite of everything. Notice the small graces that keep coming back. That’s where God hides—not the victory, but the exchange.
And if ever you find yourself empty, standing before a ceiling that refuses to speak, whisper once – not as a command, not as a surrender, but as a memory. My God will not fail me.
Let it be the rhythm of your breath.
Let it be the word that drives you forward, even when nothing else will.
father
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This post was Previously published at medium.com.
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Photo credit: Rafael Rodriguez in Unsplash
