Last week, I asked you why you write letters, and I received several thoughtful comments.
It is a curious thing, is it not, to write letters in the age of the Internet. And curiouser, still, are we who use pen and ink to hand-write our heartfelt words onto pieces of paper that are bundled up and dropped into boxes to be picked up and hand-delivered a block or a world away. While we are using almost-primitive communication skills, a robot has been sent to another planet, where it is roaming the surface in search of signs of life. All the while, we sit here on Earth, scratching words onto wood pulp.
Some people might say that our hobby, our habit, our passion is one that is stuck in the past, that we are clinging to the old ways, unwilling to let go of 19th and 20th century lifestyles. And, I'm sure many letter writers are like me and have a fondness for old fashioned manners, an interest in history, a fancy for days gone by.
Yet, I think the real reason we write letters is our conviction in the power of reaching out to other human beings today and our belief in a future that will cherish what we create.
Last weekend, I had the opportunity to look, page by page, through my late grandmother's scrapbook. In it, she had carefully glued pictures and articles and mementos of the 1930s and 1940s. There among the cherished items are letters that she and my grandfather received when they were first married, including a letter from my great-grandmother, expressing her surprise at hearing the news of the wedding and welcoming my grandmother into the family.
I'm not a Luddite or a technophobe. I use the Internet, email and cell phone every day. When that connection is down for one reason or another, I feel lost, unable to stop my brain from thinking, "I'll just look that up online."
And, yet, I know that many "conversations" I've had via email are gone, destroyed on an old harddrive or deleted in a computer crash. Things that I've written, comments that I've made electronically will never be seen again. If I sent congratulations to someone via email, no one in the future will ever read those words.
Somehow, words handwritten in ink on paper in 2012 bridge two worlds that are drifting further and further apart. And, I find a commonality with both when I write a letter and drop it in the mailbox or open the mailbox and find a card or a letter from someone else out there in the world, reaching out to me and the future with their words.
I think that's at least one of the reasons why we continue to write letters.
(Clip art courtesy of http://cliparts101.com/)
Some people might say that our hobby, our habit, our passion is one that is stuck in the past, that we are clinging to the old ways, unwilling to let go of 19th and 20th century lifestyles. And, I'm sure many letter writers are like me and have a fondness for old fashioned manners, an interest in history, a fancy for days gone by.
Yet, I think the real reason we write letters is our conviction in the power of reaching out to other human beings today and our belief in a future that will cherish what we create.
I'm not a Luddite or a technophobe. I use the Internet, email and cell phone every day. When that connection is down for one reason or another, I feel lost, unable to stop my brain from thinking, "I'll just look that up online."
And, yet, I know that many "conversations" I've had via email are gone, destroyed on an old harddrive or deleted in a computer crash. Things that I've written, comments that I've made electronically will never be seen again. If I sent congratulations to someone via email, no one in the future will ever read those words.
Somehow, words handwritten in ink on paper in 2012 bridge two worlds that are drifting further and further apart. And, I find a commonality with both when I write a letter and drop it in the mailbox or open the mailbox and find a card or a letter from someone else out there in the world, reaching out to me and the future with their words.
I think that's at least one of the reasons why we continue to write letters.
(Clip art courtesy of http://cliparts101.com/)
3 comments:
I think your sentiments about why we write letters are beautiful! This is just something that I'm recently trying to get back into as I realize that I am sometimes so glued to my computer and my phone that it does feel like there is a real loss of humanity and connection!
Not only are letters kept rather than deleted, the practice of writing letters preserves something of a vanishing civility; something somehow related to 3 o'clock coffee, 6 o'clock dinner and entire towns closing up on Sundays.
This is what I've been trying to tell people why I write, only you said it much more eloquently.
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