One year, I had a few volunteer tomato plants that popped up in my garden, and I called my mom to ask her: “Do you think if I transplant these now, they will die?”

Her response: “Well, if they die, something else will come up.”

My mom has never been the philosophical and intellectual type like my dad, but I find that through her soulful simplicity, she often inadvertently dispenses the wisest advice. She doesn’t know what Stoicism or Taoism is, but she definitely lives like she has been innately a Sage of their wisdoms since the beginning of time.

And even through all the years when she was under the constant looming shadow of a raging war, and even when my parents lost their 6-month-old daughter, my sister, because they couldn’t purchase food and medicine in a post-war Vietnam, followed by a cruel burglary that left them with not even a pan to cook with, and even when she had to rebuild her life once again when we moved to the US…Mom never lost faith that even when all is lost, SOMETHING will grow again.

And sometimes you don’t need to consult all those intricate theoretical textbooks to draw conclusions on your next move. Sometimes, you just gotta call your mama.

I hope this story reaches those who are wondering right now: what will come once the smoke clears and the ashes settle? The answer, as proven time after time again in the resilient human history, as demonstrated by the Vietnamese people, is: life. Life will come again.