Find the Hidden Letter

Here is a story for today… It goes something like this.

F. Kafka a Austrian-Czech author that wrote some pretty bizarre stories in his short life (that ended in 1924) told a story about meeting a young girl in a park that was crying because she lost her doll. He tried to help the young girl find this doll and when he realized it was gone forever, he decided to write the young girl a letter from the doll.

The letter explained that the doll had left to explore the world and would write to the young girl about her travels. Over the next few years Kafka would send the girl these letters the amazing travels. After some time, he purchased a new doll and gave it to the girl. She examined the new doll and asked why she had changed so much? She could tell it wasn’t the same as the one she lost. Along with this new doll was a final letter explaining that her travels had changed her, and the young girl took the new one in an showed her the same love that she had for the one she lost.

Later in life, when the young girl was a grown woman, she examined the doll and noticed a letter hidden inside, it read…

“Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.”

I would like to believe this story is true, but if you read a few stories written by Kafka you might think otherwise. However, the two messages in that story certainly are not founded in fantasy or fiction.

I love the idea how travel changes us. It can be traveling across the country, world or even something a simple as finding a new path to explore close to home. We can also travel through the ones we love, watching and listening to their story’s. Photos and videos certain have changed the way we can do this, but sometimes nothing can be better than sitting down and reading the written word. As I prepare for a big trip that I have planned in the summer of 2025 I find myself reading stories of people travels along my planned route. Somehow, I find myself traveling right along with them. I know when I do finally get to ride my motorcycle to Alaska that it will change me. I am so ready for that change. However, even reading these stories of other people’s travels are changing me in a slight way

I also have experienced lost love, and when you feel like you’ll never find it again then out of the blue, like barreling down a steep rocky hill, a little out of control love can come tumbling down upon you. Unexpected, but yet somehow it can help you understand that yes love will return to you. The travels that your life has carried you through in-between the lost and found certainly has changed who you were, and that’s okay. If you find yourself in a spot that you don’t have a love in your life, just make sure you keep yourself open to letting it in!

The same can be said for finding a old motorcycle that you once loved. Back in the mid 80s my second motorcycle I ever had was this little Suzuki GS450S. That bike carried my first real girlfriend on the back. It taught me how to wheelie, and took me on my very first trip out of the state I grew up in. I also learned a very valuable lesson on that bike that could have not only changed my life but ended it.

I was lucky that the alcohol I drank that night in June of 1985 only totaled the bike and not my life. Several broken bones and lots of road rash took the rest of the year to heal, and that poor Suzuki was trailered off to the junk yard. However, Like that young girl learned I also learned that love or (motorcycles) can come back to you. January of 1986, I purchased a RZ350

I no longer had that girl to ride on the back with me, but I perfected the wheelie on the RZ and that little two stroke motorcycle brought me to every state in New England and beyond! But that’s a story for another day!

Just remember…
travel will change you, let it.
Love will find you, accept it.
Buy that old motorcycle again, wheelie it!

This past summer that little Suzuki came back into my life, I haven’t found that hidden letter in it yet, but I know its there!