Dear Seth,

    You're only three years old, and at this point in your life you can't read, much less understand what I'm going to try to tell you in this letter. But I've been thinking a lot about the life that you have ahead of you, about my life so far as I reflect on what I've learned, and about my role as a dad in trying to prepare you for the trials that you will face in the coming years.

    You won't be able to understand this letter today, but someday, when you're ready, I hope you will find some wisdom and value in what I share with you.

    You are young, and life has yet to take its toll on you, to throw disappointments and heartaches and loneliness and struggles and pain into your path. You have not been worn down yet by long hours of thankless work, by the slings and arrows of everyday life.

    For this, be thankful. You are at a wonderful stage of life. You have many wonderful stages of life still to come, but they are not without their costs and perils.

    I hope to help you along your path by sharing some of the best of what I've learned. As with any advice, take it with a grain of salt. What works for me might not work for you.

    Life Can Be Cruel

    There will be people in your life who won't be very nice. They'll tease you because you're different, or for no good reason. They might try to bully you or hurt you.

    There's not much you can do about these people except to learn to deal with them, and learn to choose friends who are kind to you, who actually care about you, who make you feel good about yourself. When you find friends like this, hold on to them, treasure them, spend time with them, be kind to them, love them.

    There will be times when you are met with disappointment instead of success. Life won't always turn out the way you want. This is just another thing you'll have to learn to deal with. But instead of letting these things get you down, push on. Accept disappointment and learn to persevere, to pursue your dreams despite pitfalls. Learn to turn negatives into positives, and you'll do much better in life.

    You will also face heartbreak and abandonment by those you love. I hope you don't have to face this too much, but it happens. Again, not much you can do but to heal, and to move on with your life. Let these pains become stepping stones to better things in life, and learn to use them to make you stronger.

    But Be Open to life Anyway

    Yes, you'll find cruelty and suffering in your journey through life … but don't let that close you to new things. Don't retreat from life, don't hide or wall yourself off. Be open to new things, new experiences, new people.

    You might get your heart broken 10 times, but find the most wonderful woman the 11th time. If you shut yourself off from love, you'll miss out on that woman, and the happiest times of your life.

 You might get teased and bullied and hurt by people you meet … and then after meeting dozens of jerks, find a true friend. If you close yourself off to new people, and don't open your heart to them, you'll avoid pain … but also lose out on meeting some incredible people, who will be there during the toughest times of your life and create some of the best times of your life.

    You will fail many times but if you allow that to stop you from trying, you will miss out on the amazing feeling of success once you reach new heights with your accomplishments. Failure is a stepping stone to success.

    Life Isn't a Competition .You will meet many people who will try to outdo you, in school, in college, at work. They'll try to have nicer cars, bigger houses, nicer clothes, cooler gadgets. To them, life is a competition — they have to do better than their peers to be happy.

    Here's a secret: Life isn't a competition. It's a journey. If you spend that journey always trying to impress others, to outdo others, you're wasting your journey. Instead, learn to enjoy the journey. Make it a journey of happiness, of constant learning, of continual improvement, of love.

    Don't worry about having a nicer car or house or anything material, or even a better-paying job. None of that matters a whit, and none of it will make you happier. You'll acquire these things and then only want more. Instead, learn to be satisfied with having enough — and then use the time you would have wasted trying to earn money to buy those things … use that time doing things you love.

    Finally, know that I love you and always will. You are starting out on a weird, scary, daunting, but ultimately incredibly wonderful journey, and I will be there for you when I can. Godspeed.

Love,

Your Dad

    Studies show that you may be lied to every day anywhere from 10 to 200 times. We say, “Nice song.” “Honey, you don't look fat in that, no.” But another study showed that strangers lied three times within the first 10 minutes of meeting each other. We lie more to strangers than we lie to coworkers. Men lie eight times more about themselves than they do about other people. Women lie more to protect other people. If you're married, you're going to lie to your wife/ husband in one out of every 10 communications. If you're unmarried, that number drops to three. But look, if at some point you got lied to, it's because you agreed to get lied to. Truth about lying: lying's a cooperative act. Not all lies are harmful. Sometimes we're willing to get lied to for social dignity(尊严), maybe to keep a private secret.

    Lying is complex. It exists in our daily and business lives. We're deeply disturbed by the truth. We explain it, sometimes for very good reasons, other times just because we don't understand the gaps between ideals and realities in our lives. We're against lying, but secretly we're for it in ways that our society has practiced for centuries and centuries. It's as old as breathing. It's part of our culture and history. Think the stories from Dante, Shakespeare, the Bible, News of the World.

    Lying has great value to the evolution of human beings. Researchers have long known that the more intelligent the species, the more likely it is to lie. We humans like to become leaders. It starts really early. How early? Well, babies will pretend to cry, pause, wait to see who's coming and then go right back to crying. One-year-olds learn hiding truth. Five-year-olds lie outright and try to control through flattery (奉承). Nine-year-olds, masters of covering up.

    So what do we do about lies? Well, there are steps we can take to guide our way through the bushes. Trained lie spotters (检测员) get to the truth 90% of the time. The rest of us, we're only 54% right. There are clever liars and stupid liars, but there're no real creative liars. While lying, we all make the same mistakes, and we all use the same techniques.

    Five years ago, when I taught art at a school in Seattle, I used Tinkertoys as a test at the beginning of a term to find out something about my students. I put a small set of Tinkertoys in front of each student, and said: "Make something out of the Tinkertoys. You have 45 minutes today — and 45 minutes each day for the rest of the week."

    A few students hesitated to start. They waited to see the rest of the class would do. Several others checked the instructions and made something according to one of the model plans provided. Another group built something out of their own imaginations.

    Once I had a boy who worked experimentally with Tinkertoys in his free time. His constructions filled a shelf in the art classroom and a good part of his bedroom at home. I was delighted at the presence of such a student. Here was an exceptionally creative mind at work. His presence meant that I had an unexpected teaching assistant in class whose creativity would infect(感染) other students.

    Encouraging this kind of thinking has a downside. I ran the risk of losing those students who had a different style of thinking. Without fail one would declare, "But I'm just not creative."

    "Do you dream at night when you're asleep?"

    "Oh, sure."

    "So tell me one of your most interesting dreams." The student would tell something wildly imaginative. Flying in the sky or in a time machine or growing three heads. "That's pretty creative. Who does that for you?"

    "Nobody. I do it."

    "Really-at night, when you're asleep?"

    "Sure."

    "Try doing it in the daytime, in class, okay?"

    Mr. Lee was in bed and was trying to go to sleep when he heard the bell ring. He turned on the light and looked at his clock. It was twelve o'clock. "Who can it be at this time of night?" He thought. He decided to go and find out. So he got of bed, put on his dressing gown (浴袍) and went to the door. When he opened the door, there was nobody there. "That is very strange." Then he went back to his bedroom, took off his dressing gown, got back into bed ,turned off the light and tried to go to sleep.

    A few minutes later he heard the bell again. Mr. Lee jumped out of bed very quickly and rushed to the door. He opened it, but again he found no one there. He closed the door and tried not to feel angry. Then he saw a piece of paper on the floor. He picked it up. There were some words on it : "It is now after midnight(午夜), so it is April Fool's Day (愚人节). April fool to you!"

    "Oh, it was the English boy next door!" Mr. Lee exclaimed (惊叫) and almost smiled. He went back to bed and feel asleep at once. The bell did not ring again.

    A typical child plays many roles, such as friend, neighbor, son or daughter. Simply reminding children of that fact can lead to better problem-solving and more flexible thinking, according to new research from Duke University.

    Better problem-solving was just one positive finding of the study, said lead author Sarah Gaither, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke. After thinking about their own various identities, children also showed more flexible thinking about race and other social groupings—a behavior that could be valuable in an increasingly diverse society.

    In a series of experiments, Gaither and her colleagues looked at 196 children, ages 6 and 7. In an experiment, one group of children was reminded that they had various identities, such as son, daughter, reader or helper. A second group of children was reminded of their multiple physical attributes, such as a mouth, arms and legs. All the children then needed to handle a few tasks

    Children who were reminded of their various identities showed stronger problem-solving and creative thinking skills. When shown pictures of a bear staring at honey-filled beehive(蜂窝)high up in a tree, these children had more creative ideas for how the bear might get the honey, such as turning over a bowl so that it became a stool(凳子). In other words, they saw a new use for the bowl. Children who were reminded of their multiple roles also showed more flexible thinking about social groupings. When asked to categorize different photos of faces, they suggested many ways to Spso. They identified smiling faces such as unsmiling ones, and old and young faces. The other children, meanwhile, primarily grouped people's faces by race and gender(性别).

    The-study suggests ways to promote flexible thinking for the young, which could be especially valuable for teachers." Gaither said.

    "We have this tendency in our society to only think about ourselves in connection with one important group at a time," Gaither said. "When kids think that they have various identities, they show greater abilities."

I often teach about happiness and what has become clear is this: There are some qualities unhappy people always have. Here are some of them.

 Happy people know life can be hard and tend to live through hard times. They take responsibility for how they got themselves into a mess, and focus on getting themselves out of it as soon as possible. Unhappy people see themselves as victims of life and stay stuck in the "look what happened to me" attitude instead of finding a way through and out to the other side.

    Most happy people believe in the good in people instead of thinking everyone is out to get them. Generally open and friendly towards people they meet, happy people foster(培养) a sense of community around themselves and meet new people with an open heart. Unhappy people are distrustful of most people they meet and don't think strangers can be trusted. Unfortunately, this behaviour slowly closes all chances of meeting new friends.

    Unhappy people believe someone else's good fortune is stolen from their own. They believe there's not enough goodness to go around and always compare others' against theirs. This leads to jealousy(嫉妒). Happy people know that others' good luck and superior circumstances are just signs of what they also can achieve if they try hard enough. They believe in unlimited possibilities and don't get stuck in thinking one person's good fortune limits their possible outcomes in life.

    There's only so much space between the two ears. Unhappy people fill that space with constant worry and fear. Happy people experience fear and worry too, but they make an important difference between feeling it and living with it. When fear or worry crosses happy people's minds, they'll ask themselves if there's an action they can take to prevent their fear or worry from happening and they take it. If not, they realise they're spinning in fear and they lay it down.