The adopted child

Khánh grins and says goodbye to their friends, then jumps into their father's car, which is waiting. Their father asks:

"You're so happy you might forget something. Check. Do you have your graduation certificate?"

Khánh hugs their father and says:

"You've been reminding me not to leave things behind all my life. I checked."

Their father drives Khánh to a fancy restaurant, and the two go in to eat, to celebrate their university graduation. After the meal their father calls Khánh to sit beside him and says:

"Today I see that you've grown up, so I'll tell you a secret. Stay calm."

Khánh tenses, guessing the news won't be good. Their father tells them:

"In the old days our family was poor, and I struggled from place to place to make a living. Your brother and sister were too small and only went to school. Sometimes I came home only once a year to give your mother money. One year-end when I came home, your mother was five months pregnant with you, and it clearly wasn't mine. She confessed she had been with another man, and said whatever I decided to do with her, she would accept. I felt as if I had fallen into a deep pit.

I couldn't sleep that whole night, and your mother just sat there sobbing. Near dawn I understood many things. I went over, helped her up, held her in my arms and told her I would treat you as my own child. The whole family would move somewhere else so that no one would gossip.

If she still loved that man, I would step aside and only take the children. But she said a momentary impulse is not love, and that if I let her live she would live, and if I said die she would die. She said that after he learned she was pregnant, he disappeared.

I arranged to stay with the family and stopped working far away, and by the mercy of heaven and Buddha everything prospered again. I kept my promise. For all these years I have loved you very much, even favoring you over your brother and sister.

Looking back today, I'm very glad I made the right decision that night. If I had acted otherwise out of wounded pride, jealousy and hatred, you children wouldn't have had this peaceful home and a proper education. You're grown now, so today you have the right to know the truth about your life. You can go looking for your birth father if you want. As for me, I have loved you for so long that I cannot stop loving you."

Khánh, their face soaked with tears, says in a choked voice:

"I have no other father but you. I have no wish to know about that biological father. In my life and in my heart there is only you."

Khánh hugs their father and cries for a long time.

It takes great morality to get through a family tragedy like this. Selfish jealousy in romantic love and marriage is extreme, and most people collapse under it. Very few have enough morality to overcome the hatred and jealousy. The man in the story is a rare example, but such people do exist.

We also have to talk about today's social crisis of unfaithfulness in love and marriage. Both men and women stray very easily when they meet someone new. As soon as they take a liking, they accept pursuing a sinful affair. Even a slight attraction makes them forget their existing relationship or marriage. Love and marriage in this age are extremely fragile. Society becomes disordered and unstable as a result.

When we meet someone with appealing qualities, liking naturally arises. This is the test of our morality of faithfulness. A person lacking it lets the mind keep liking, and if there is a chance, lets the feeling drift all the way, caring nothing for the consequences. A person with it cuts off that liking at the first thought. But not everyone has the strength, will, reason and morality to cut it off at once.

Usually good gives rise to good, and bad gives rise to bad. Someone who has lived decently, done good deeds and respected those worthy of respect has enough faithfulness to turn the liking away in a heartbeat. Someone who has lived badly and wrongly cannot have enough faithfulness to get past the attractions that keep hovering in the mind.

If we keep straying easily, we destroy our family and society, and our own happiness too.