To the fortunate finder of this letter:
It is my dearest wish to change your life. Of course, I am not saying that there is anything wrong with your life the way it is. I only wish to bring to your attention something that seems to be just beyond the reach of most. You see, dear finder, you are alive right at this very moment. Blood is pulsing and cells are dividing and your alveoli are separating the good from the expendable in your lungs. But one day, you will not be alive. One day, you as you are now, no matter what you believe happens after, will cease to exist and will be forgotten.
It is a morose topic. But let’s rewind. You are still here! You still have this letter in one hand and the bottle it came from in the other hand. And that means that you are important. You have a purpose right now. You may not know what it is but it’s there in your shadow, following you, waiting for the opportune moment to arise. Pay attention for it, because it may not be something grand, and it may not happen all at once, but you were put here for more than just to fill the scheme and become dust. Look how much you’ve accomplished already! You beat out millions of other sperm in the most important race of your life. You have ambition. You are a fighter.
Do you believe me yet? If you don’t, go back and reread the second paragraph, and search for a hidden message you obviously missed the first time. If you’re still with me and I’ve got you convinced, let’s keep going. You believe that there is a reason for you, right? Good. Do you believe this is the same for everyone? When you get to the end of this letter and I tell you to recap this bottle and throw it back to from whence it came, will you do it in hope that someone will feel the same? Will you do it, even if the next person to find this bottle was an atheist? A homosexual? A devout Catholic? An African American? A spoiled girl from Beverly Hills? a homeless man? Your mother or father? Charles Manson? All of these people are just the same build up as you are, my friend. A heart between some lungs, beneath a cage of ribs, just under the surface of a few flimsy layers of skin. You just happened to be the first one to find this letter.
You are slowly dying, as I mentioned before. Everything is. You only have this one life, and you will never get another chance to be someone else, and no one will ever be you. But you do have the power to listen to others’ stories and live through them. This is what I meant when I said that I wished to change your life. You can see and touch and taste and experience everything I’ve ever been through just by listening to me.
Really, you have all the power in the world over how many lives you live.
But, hey, I’m just a paper you found in a grungy bottle somewhere. You can recycle me and use my bottle as a vase. Or you can recap me, throw me back, and define life.