The Letter – A Spiritual Story by David Grinshaw

My name is David. I was an average man living an average life. Not a bad life, not a pointless life, not an unhappy life but measured by the yard stick of society I slotted somewhere in the middle. I had a secure job and made fairly decent money, enough for a new car, payments on my own house and I was comfortable. I could afford the debt that many of my friends couldn't.

I lived a good life. I was fit and healthy spending much time in the Gym. I had a girlfriend who was beautiful and also had a good job a nice car and a Gymtastic body. According to the construct of society I had it all going on. I worked hard to rise to where I was and had the intention to continue to rise. I loved my car, I loved my house, I loved my body, I loved my neat, trimmed well defined upwardly mobile persona, I even loved my girlfriend. Everything was going according to plan. I should have been one of the happiest guys in the world but I wasn't. There was no dark hidden secret, no long held bitterness or regret. I was bored, very, very bored. Extremely bored, desperately bored.

Everything that i thought would enrich my life, didn't. The life i was building felt like a hole i was digging.

People were looking at my life with envy, but if they only knew how empty i felt they would soon stop. There was something i was not getting.

I must have missed something. I was working towards everything that i thought was important but as I acquired these things I just felt the hollowness within me expand. Each achievement was just another trophy of stupidity. Something that thought would build my life but just made the hole I was digging deeper.

I had to stop my self pity and my analytical obsession. I had a good life. Go for a drive in my nice car, take my sexy looking girlfriend out and show the world how awesome I must be to own a female body like that, then have sex with her with the ego building thoughts of how many guys wanted to have sex with her that night but it was me doing it. Yeah i am banging the hottie, i've got the pecs and the abbs and the tiny little body fat percentage that belong on a mens health magazine cover. I just had to keep busy, no time to think means, i wont think and that gnawing, nagging, persistent dissatisfaction will just wear out in time. Surely.

You hear of life changing experiences. Something of the magnitude that defines a time line for the rest of life. Oldies used to refer to things as being, before or after the war. I heard a man who referred to things as being, before or after his accident. An advent so powerful the it redefines a persons life for evermore. It changes things irrevocably. Nothing will ever be the same again.

It happened to me.

Not a car accident, not a near death experience, not the loss of a dearly loved life companion. It was not any of these things but had an effect on me that nothing else could. It stopped my life in its track. Everything was different and nothing would ever be the same again. It was as if a nuclear bomb had exploded within me. It blew me apart. It blew away my vision and my knowledge, my perception of the world and my place in it. It blew away my ignorance. Nothing would ever be the same. I now speak in the chronology of before and after I read that letter.

Finally it all made sense. Everything made sense. My dissatisfaction with life did not mean that i was a self obsessed, ungrateful, spoiled brat.

It meant i was looking for something deeper, something real, something everlasting. And i found it. And it changed me deeply, the very core of my existence. It filled the hole, it gave me truth. I want everyone in the world to read this letter. It is not just written to me but to all of humanity. And i want all of humanity to read it. Not all of humanity will see what I have seen or experience all what I have experienced. But some will and those who do will know the joy that I feel, the purpose that I live by, the freedom that I enjoy, the certainty that I cherish. The average lifespan is 613608 hours, I hope everyone uses a mere ten of these hours to give themself the opportunity to read this letter and see what it does for them.

Thanks for your time and all the best for your life,
David Grinshaw