If you are reading this letter it means that I have accomplished my plan of killing myself. Don't waste your time trying to track down the sender of this letter to stop me. It is too late I am already dead. I know your instincts will lead you to feel bad for me, but I assure you it is not necessary. Death is better than the life that I have lived. I was a poor man from a humble family. We didn't have much and that which we did have was never enough. I had dreams like anyone else. I wanted a better life. I worked hard trying to save money so that I could make some investments that would grow and help me to get on my way. But every time I had saved enough to make my investments, some emergency would arise and require the money of me.
One day I met a woman named Elizabeth from San Diego. She seemed to really like me and I liked her too. I told her all of my deepest secrets and even my dreams and she encouraged me. We did everything together and for the first time in my life I had a friend.
One day she told me about an investment that would make us very wealthy and that if I could come up with half the money she would also put in half. So I worked late hours and even on weekends and holidays and finally I had saved up $10,000 which was to be my half for the investment. It was the first time that I had held $10,000 in my hand.
One night Elizabeth came over to my house to get my half of the money for the investment. She said that the window of opportunity was closing and that we needed to move quickly.
I thought it a bit strange that she would come so late in the evening, but she had been my friend and I trusted her so I gave her the money.
She said that she would watch the investment for me as she knew I was very busy with work and all, and that in 30 days my money would have at least doubled and she would bring it to me.
I didn't hear from her as often as was normal, but she assured me that it was only because she was busy finding other investments for us to get into, and that in a few weeks I would be a happy man.
As the weeks passed I often daydreamed making plans for the money I anticipated receiving. When 30 days had passed I tried calling my friend, but I wasn't able to reach her. It then dawned on me that I hadn't heard from Elizabeth in over a week. I thought surely she must be busy finding other investments for us and that she would soon call, but she never did.
I went by Elizabeth's place and to my horror her apartment was empty and her neighbors said that she had left town over a week ago. All of my money was gone and there was nothing I could do about it.
I didn't know the first place to look for Elizabeth or if that was even her real name.
After that I decided that I needed to be wiser when dealing with people and that I would never again give anyone any money for any reason.
I then ran into a childhood friend named Douglas. All of his life Douglas had been the kind of guy who was always making up inventions that he said would one day make him rich. He never played outside with the other kids. He always stayed in his room which he called his laboratory, creating things.
All of the other kids laughed at him and called him names, but I kind of liked Douglas. I thought some of the things he made were ingenious and had potential. I hadn't seen him for many years and I didn't even recognize him at first. He looked old and frumpy and had gained a lot of weight.
From the looks of it, he was at least 60 or 70 lbs. over weight if not more. Not what I would have expected of a guy, who was so talented and creative. He went on explaining how over the years people had stolen his inventions and had made lots of money from them.
He said however, that he had one invention left that would make him wealthier than all of the others combined, but that he didn't have the money to put it into production. I had some money saved up and thought to offer it to him...but when I thought back on my mistake in giving Elizabeth my money I couldn't part with it.
I really wanted to help him, but I was just too afraid to make the gamble, so I passed on what Douglas called the opportunity of a life time. A few months later I picked up my morning paper. Sprawled across the front page was a picture of my childhood friend Douglas, 70lbs lighter with a huge smile on his face.
The headline read: Inventor of Miracle Weight Loss Drug “THINYOU” makes $25,000,000 over night! Turns out that Douglas had met a woman named Elizabeth from San Diego, whom when he explained to her what his invention was had loaned him $10,000 to send the invention to production and now they were both rich and she had disappeared again!
Oh, it gets better. A few weeks after that a tornado raced through my town and lifted only my house ,100 feet off the ground and threw it 6 miles into a neighboring city, destroying all of my belongings including my savings which was hidden in the house under my bed!
Not one of the other homes was affected. There was not even a single tree uprooted. So you see, Death is better than the life I have lived.
Thanks for listening, See you on the other side, Bob.”...
The Old woman looked out across the expanse of ocean and held Bob's letter close to her heart. She closed her eyes and took deep breathes in and out trying not to cry. She felt sad for Bob. Not particularly because of the things that had happened to him, although they were terrible. But more so because it was evident to her, that if all of those things were already behind Bob, the best of his life had to be in front of him, but he didn't know it. And how could he not understand, that money and houses could be replaced with even more money and even bigger and better houses?
She remembered reading somewhere in her special book that, “The earth belonged to One power and even the fullness of the earth belonged to this power also and that, this power found pleasure in giving us things.”