I was reading an article about people who still send letters this morning and thought this was very nicely put. I still send cards and letters and some of my friends do as well. It is very nice to get personal mail, a gesture that you can touch sometimes covered in stickers. I used to write to an older lady that was a regular at MILK when I lived in the arctic who just wanted someone to write/talk to and I loved getting her letters (and yes they also had stickers all over them). In a way I feel like an old soul because I still enjoy sending and receiving letters or calling people on the phone to catch up. Ive been told by a friend my age that I these things arent necessary and I should just be happy with a facebook friendship and I thought, am I weird for enjoying personal interactions with people who Ive spent years of my life with? Maybe I am. I just like to hear a real laugh now and again rather than an LOL and I dont post everything about my life on facebook for everyone to see but I might want to talk to a dear friend about this or that. ANYWAYS....heres the quote I really liked from the article about letters. There’s a reason we talk about letters. There’s a reason we keep letters. Maybe it’s the doodles. Maybe it’s the memories. But I think it all draws back to the bones of presence. How nothing feels so wonderful as knowing someone, somewhere, is thinking of you. How a letter symbolizes that someone, anyone, is paying attention to you in a world that pummels us with thousands of directions to look in. There is something remarkable about just the thought of that. The thought of someone sitting down for you. Taking out a piece of paper for you. Focusing their mind on the words they write for you. And through sloppy cursive and a cramped hand, they manage to tell you all the things that have ever mattered, in between the lines: “I care. I’m here. I think of you often. You’re more than just words on a screen to me.”
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 12:10:35 +0000