The Lost Art of Written Letters

This is an older post from another blog that I wanted to transfer over here because I'm changing the focus of the other blog.

It's no secret that in this day and age some of the great things from days of old are disappearing one small piece at a time. Surrounded by technological advances, and a new website to become a member of each day when we wake up, it seems to me that inter-personal relationships are becoming entirely dependent on some sort of technology to be maintained. To a certain extent this isn't such a bad situation, especially when it makes it far easier to communicate in a rapid fashion, but in other ways it seems to take away some of the connection you get when being someone's friend.

Nowadays a large portion of my friendships are conducted online as a member of Facebook or one of the various other social networking websites. There are friends on Facebook of mine that I haven't been in the physical presence of for several years on some cases, even when I live in a relatively close vicinity. There are days when I find this helpful because I'm sure some of them I wouldn't have a clue about if social networking sites were not available, but part of me longs to have something a little more tangible.

I'm one of those people who has multiple email addresses for various things, one for work, one for registrations, and one for personal contact. The interesting thing about this is that for some reason I have this innate dislike for the impersonal nature of using email for casual personal correspondence. I have this feeling that sometimes things from the "old world" so to speak should be retained. This is where the lost art of handwritten letter writing comes into play.

Remember back in elementary school when your 4th grade teacher told the entire class that you would each be getting a pen pal from some faraway country? I do, and I remember it being a pretty exciting thing to share letters from someone across the globe. I remember when as a class we would take time and each write a letter to another 4th grade student and put them all into one large envelope to be shipped out the next day. We were always really excited to show up to class a few weeks later and have our teacher reveal a return envelope full of letters for us.

Part of me longs for a return to the days when going to the mailbox meant something each day. It could be a letter from a friend, a postcard from a relative, or some other exciting news from what seemed like an incredible distances when only nine years old. I'd love to get more than some inane credit card offers, mailers, or magazine subscription offers when I go to check the mail. It would be great to get something worth actually reading on occasion.

If I could find a way to get the people around me to write letters once again, and not just type the words out on a keyboard each time I would think it a small moral victory. Until then however, I think I'll have to cope with getting everything in some form of digitized text.