My son, words cannot express my personal pride, seeing you complete your secondary school education and passing out with such good grades. I have watched you put your nose to the grindstone and burn the midnight oil to ensure success. I am happy that you took to heart my words of advice all these years which doctor Orison Swett Marden put succinctly thus: “Great men have found no royal road to triumph. It is always the old routes, by way of industry and perseverance.” As you progress in life, do not forget this.
Now, my son, in a few weeks, you will be travelling to America for further studies. One thing is of great concern to me as I finalise your travel arrangements. A number of our young men travel to America and end up marrying from there. Some, I suspect, to regularize their stay, some for love, some for the heck of it. Whatever the reason, I have observed that over 90 per cent of these marriages fail. Since I have been married to your mother for over 25 years, (and God willing, and with both my wife and I assisting God by making the effort, your mother and I will stay married until the day He in His wisdom calls one of us home), I urge you, do not to marry a foreigner. It is not that I do not believe in interracial marriages, but given their high rate of failure, I will not like you to suffer a failed marriage.
Why are these interracial marriages prone to failure? I strongly suspect, given that marriage is a difficult institution as it is, that adding cultural and social differences to the mix you have to deal with within a marriage adds additional strains which makes it difficult for the center to hold leading to things falling apart.
My son, a word is enough for the wise, do yourself and your future children a favour, when you consider that it is time for you to take a wife, marry from your own country, this gives the union a fighting chance of survival and may save you and your children the pain and consequences of a failed marriage.
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