Tucked within it was a short but timeless list of life advice, divided into three categories.“Dear Pie”: So begins one of the most profound letters a father ever wrote to a daughter. In the summer of 1933, The Great Gatsby author F Scott Fitzgerald, one of the most iconic voices of the Jazz Age, penned a heartfelt letter to his 11-year-old daughter Scottie who was away at camp. Tucked within it was a short but timeless list of life advice, divided into three categories: things to worry about, things not to worry about, and things to think about.Fitzgerald’s tone was while instructive, remained playful. “I feel very strongly about you doing duty,” he opens, before requesting “a little more documentation” about her reading in French. But he quickly detours into the philosophical: “I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either.” These, he writes, are stage tricks. Real life, he insists, is about doing one’s duty. Virtue earns its rewards. Failure to meet one’s responsibilities brings quiet consequences, “doubly costly.”Then, with an abrupt touch of absurdity, he invokes “the White Cat” whom he threatens to spank six times “for every time you are impertinent.” It’s the kind of parental joke that dances between imagined threat and warm reassurance. He thinks of her, he says, “and always pleasantly.”But it’s the list that follows—an outline of things to worry about, things not to worry about, and things to think about that turns this letter into something that much like his oeuvre continues to resonate to this day.Things to worry about📌 Worry about courage.📌 Worry about cleanliness.📌 Worry about efficiency.📌 Worry about horsemanship…Fitzgerald urges his daughter to be brave, to take care of herself, to be useful, and, curiously, to ride well. The list begins with character and discipline. Even “horsemanship” may be less about literal riding than about the mastery of skill, control, and poise.A letter of advice from F. Scott Fitzgerald to his 11-year-old daughter: https://t.co/hhR5ebZT7w pic.twitter.com/EJcUk0TYKJ— Letters of Note (@LettersOfNote) September 18, 2021Also Read | 100 years of The Great Gatsby: Echoes of the American dream in modern IndiaThings not to worry about📌Don’t worry about popular opinion.📌Don’t worry about dolls.📌Don’t worry about the past.📌Don’t worry about the future.📌 Don’t worry about growing up.📌Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you.📌Don’t worry about triumph.📌Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault.📌Don’t worry about mosquitoes.📌Don’t worry about flies.📌Don’t worry about insects in general.📌Don’t worry about parents.📌Don’t worry about boys.📌Don’t worry about disappointments.📌Don’t worry about pleasures.📌 Don’t worry about satisfactions.Here, Fitzgerald strips away the anxieties of childhood and adulthood. He dismisses the noise of opinion, the tyranny of comparison, the fear of failure, even the allure of success. His advice to his daughter, and by extension to us, is freeing: most of what we obsess over is not worth the worry.Story continues below this adAlso Read | My Father and I: Writers talk on books and bondingThings to think about📌What am I really aiming at?How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:(a) Scholarship(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?In this final section, Fitzgerald turns inward, toward the questions of purpose and self-development. He doesn’t ask his daughter to strive for perfection, but to think carefully about her direction. Is she growing intellectually, socially, physically? The questions are open-ended, reflective, and enduring.This letter, written in a quiet Maryland home during the Great Depression, continues to speak in a world louder and more distracted than Fitzgerald could have imagined. It’s not a lecture, but something closer to a gift: a father’s distilled hopes, his wisdom, and his unspoken love.Story continues below this adAs Father’s Day reminds us of the many ways fathers try to reach their children, few examples are as enduring as this. “With dearest love,” he signs off. And nearly a century later, it still feels freshly written.© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd