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To My Sons, Seekers of Light in a Forgetting Age — A Father’s Letter from 2025

My beloved sons, As you grow into the fullness of your lives, I want to offer you something more lasting than advice—a light by which to walk, when the world around you grows dim or distracted. When I was your age, I came to America hoping to sit at the feet of giants. I imagined her universities as temples of wisdom, her libraries as cathedrals of memory. I thought I would find in lecture halls what I had glimpsed as a child in Florence, Assisi, Jerusalem—a civilization that remembered who it was. But I arrived in the 1990s to find something else. Professors mocked the past. Students chased credentials. The great books gathered dust, while fashionable ideologies were recited like mantras. I felt out of place—not because I lacked knowledge, but because I hungered for it too deeply. The very soul of the West seemed to have gone silent. And then, I found a voice: Allan Bloom. His Closing of the American Mind said what I could not. Later, Charles Sykes named the betrayal I felt but could not articulate. They reminded me that my longing was not foolish—it was true. I wasn’t lost; the culture was. My sons, you were born into a world that deconstructs but forgets to build. A world where identity is curated, but character is neglected. Where algorithms outpace imagination, and entertainment chokes contemplation. But you must not conform to this amnesia. You must become Renaissance men—not in costume, but in spirit. Read Homer not to pass a test, but to understand the hero’s burden. Read Plato to cleanse your thinking and see the soul more clearly. Study Augustine not to be pious, but to wrestle with truth in a fallen world. Learn Latin, not for résumé-building, but because it tunes the mind to precision and beauty. Sing, draw, debate, pray—not to win, but to be whole. The world may mock you. It may tell you that truth is relative, beauty is outdated, and virtue is performative. But remember this: the real counterculture now is wisdom, humility, memory, and depth. You will be tempted by ease. Resist it. You will be told to “move on” from the past. Instead, move deeper. You will be told that meaning is yours to invent. Seek, instead, what is true. Carry this burden joyfully, my sons. It is not a curse—it is your crown. You may be among the few in your generation who remember that learning is not consumption, but conversion. And one day, when the world grows weary of distraction and yearns for roots, you will be there—not shouting, but standing quietly, wisely, offering what you inherited: the soul of the West, remembered, renewed, reborn in you. With love, Your Father

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