Set standards for yourselves and your friends. Don’t fall for cheap applause. To seek recognition from others can make you unfree, if you are not able to dispense with it gracefully when it does not come your way. Not everyone succeeds at this. 

As for the other people you will encounter in your lives: take them as they are. Don’t react right away to what you find strange or unsettling; look for what is good in every person. For one thing, that is more just; for another, it will protect you from narrow-mindedness.

A father writes a letter to his children days before his execution.