Monday 30 September 2013

My letter to the Rest of the World - a contest organised by Josh Irby

 “I am doing the Open Letter Challenge  organized by Josh Irby. This is my response to An Open Letter to You from the Rest of the World.”
Dear World
When I was 14 I read a book by Mark twain called “The Adventures of Tom sawyer”, but I don’t feel like Twain wrote an adventure. I feel like he wrote a character with an adventurous spirit.... the adventure wrote itself.
Twain took me inside the head of his character. As I followed Tom Sawyer’s story, I realized I was following the thoughts inside Twain’s head, thoughts and ideas that were both witty and wise. I loved the direction I was going in as my mind was travelling inside his.
When I finished reading it, I found that his mind was travelling in mine.  His thoughts and ideas were running inside me like electricity, lighting up a void in me, helping me see parts of myself I never saw before. I decided from then on world, that I wanted to do to others, what Twain did to me.

Eventually I found Twain’s mind rubbing so hard into mine, that it helped me squeeze out some ideas of my own. I wrote down some notes, and next thing I knew, two years went by and I had the first draft for a novel about two youthful adventurous spirits not too dissimilar from Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

I spent the next two years refining and polishing......and I’m still refining and polishing.  I’ll be honest world, If It wasn't for my fear and self-doubt, you’d have seen my book by now.
 “What if people hate it”, “What if people love it and then I can never meet their expectations again”, “What if the woman I’m meant to marry judges my worth based on how good this book is”. You see the pressure I put on myself...I used to blame you world, but now I realize It was all me.

In 2009, I was invited to a bible study. I heard a story there, one I’d heard many a time before from movies, and Christmas and Easter advertising.   However in this bible study, 15 or so people gathered together in a small apartment in New Jersey, and I heard this story like never before. I came to see how a story that happened 2,000 years ago was moving in their hearts, shaping the life they were living today. 

I realized, time had not rusted the power this story has of striking into people’s hearts. I've seen how it can extinguish all the emptiness in a person.
It shone a light in me, replacing my emptiness. When I recognize this light me, my thoughts come from a place so bright that I have the confidence that I can create stories that can take people to places worth travelling to.

If I keep my story under the basket of my self-doubt, I’m depriving someone else of the light my story could give them and reveal within them.



Presently, I’m a Pastoral Carer in an aged care facility. Part of my job is to write brief life stories of the residents so that the staff can get to know them better. There are 238 residents, and I believe they deserve to be defined by a story, not a number. I interviewed a lady who is bound to a wheelchair, but she told me she had a wonderful life and has no regrets. She said to me, “Go as far as you can while you can”. 

World, watch me follow her advice.

Yours sincerely,
Sal