To the editor:
It seems very sad to me that the act, and the art, of personal letter-writing has almost disappeared! It’s a loss of a cherished institution, but will be noticed and missed by only a few.
In today’s world where speed is the essence, and saving time a religion, electronic communication has taken over. It’s immediate, it’s easy, and when there are questions to be answered there’s a fast response. And certainly, hearing someone’s voice at the other end of a telephone line can be very comforting.
So who cares anyway? Why not just bid a fond farewell to the personal letter?
Well, for starters, there’s no special care for the language, no desire to evoke a laugh or surprise the reader. There’s no literary merit in the text message or the e-mail or the telephone call. There’s not even any attention to spelling. In other words, it’s just a communication, and nothing more. And then it’s gone; lost forever in the ether of space.
But the written word has been labored over, and massaged, and laughed or cried over as the author gave it birth. It’s full of heart and perhaps passion, and hopefully a thing to be admired, if not treasured. It’s a tangible something representing someone’s thoughts and aspirations, not to be dismissed too lightly. It’s not a recitation of facts, but a desire to please, and to say to the reader, “I miss you. I wish you were here. I love you.”
Some day way down the line, when the great-great-grandkids say to their folks, “What was it really like in our great-great-grandparent’s day? How did the old folk live before space travel, and cryogenics, and implanted computer chips, and cloned people, and our genetically engineered super humans?”
And maybe the keeper of the treasures will respond, “Here’s what your ancestors did. Here’s what they cared about and how they lived, and how they passed their time.”
And they will go to their treasure chest, and bring out some dusty old pages, and tell their loved ones, “Just read these old writings, and you’ll get the feel of life as it was way back then. But hang on to them because it’s all you have to acquaint you with your past!”
I have some old letters from my past that I cherish. Mostly from my parents, some from my brother and sister, some from friends. Sadly, they are all deceased. I even have a few I wrote home when I was evacuated out of London during World War II. It’s not just the nostalgia, they are a connection to my past. They remind me that life was simpler then, and harder too, but we didn’t know it, so we didn’t care. They speak of good times shared, yes, and bad times too. They tell of hopes, and of loved ones, of sicknesses and happy times. They tell, in fact, all the highs and lows of living
Old photos are fine, but they don’t convey much of the spirit. They are good to have in conjunction with the letter, to add some color to the words. But on their own one doesn’t learn very much.
I make one concession to the modern times: I type my letters instead of hand-writing. My excuse is that my hand gets tired so quickly when I write, and then my scrawl becomes almost indecipherable. There used to be a time when it was considered impolite to type a personal letter, but, like doffing your hat to a lady, or drinking tea only from a china cup, it’s a custom no longer honored, or at least, “more honored in the breach than the observance.”
So what’s to be done about it? Probably nothing! Letter-writing takes time, and time seems to be what everyone is short of. Our frenetic pace of living eliminates any time for standing still awhile, and just dreaming. Letter writing is a luxury that we can ill-afford, or at best it’s a hurried scribble, like “Hope you are well” or “Have a Happy Christmas” to satisfy some guilty feeling of obligation.
All we can hope for today is to gather up those old letters hiding away in some long-forgotten storage box under the stairs, and put a large sign on them, “Do Not Destroy,” so maybe, just maybe, when the great-great-grandkids find them they’ll have some emotional connection with their past.
Geoff Hornsby
Freeland
