A Letter To Myself In 10 Years

Dear Carlos,

I wanted to enter into one of the many challenges that Vocal offers its writers. The challenge that I entered required me to write a letter to my hero. However, I wasn't sure who I considered my hero to be. Initially, I was trying to choose between either Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, or Mr. Beast. Although, after seeking advice from my family, I was given the idea to write a letter to you... or should I say to us.

A few years back I had seen a video of the famous actor Matthew McConaughey giving a speech about his hero.

When I was 15 years old, I had a very important person in my life ask me who's your hero and I said I don't know I've gotta think about that give me a couple of weeks. I come back two weeks later and this person comes back to me and says who's your hero? I said I thought about it and you know who it is? It's me in ten years. So I turn 25, ten years later that same person comes to me and goes so are you a hero? And I was like, not even close no no no my hero is me at 35. So you see every day, every week, every month, and every year of my life, my hero is always 10 years away.

You see right now we are at an exciting point in our lives. We've finally gotten sober and have been for the last three months. I'm absolutely certain that we will have accomplished so many great things by the time you read this. That being said, I wanted to thank you for staying strong and continuing to march forward even when things got hard. I also wanted to thank you for being the father you have been and will continue to be until the day we die. You are the person that I will strive to be every single day of our life and it's because of that fact that I consider you my hero.

Right now we are still young and have so much more to learn, so please be patient with me. I will make mistakes along the way and there will be times of our life that will make you a bit frustrated but I promise I will always do my very best to make you proud. We just survived the darkest time of our entire life thus far and now the possibilities for our future are endless. A year ago, we never believed that we would ever get to the position that we are in our lives right now. I know that it's up to me to make sure that we never allow things to get that dark ever again. We are not going to be an example to kids of what your life will turn out to be if you waste it away doing drugs. We are going to be an example of who you can become if you make the decision to stop.

It's impossible for me to know what will happen between now that we're writing this and when you finally get to read it. However, I am confident that by the time you do read it, you will be proud of the life that we've lived so far and the man that we have become. I promise to do everything in my power in order to make that happen. That way, in ten years when I become you, we'll strive to make our hero as proud of us, as I did to make you proud in me.