i like technology as much as the next person. i love my mac book and my handy wacom drawing tablet. i studied graphic design and make art on a computer for a living, but technology is fleeting! i just spent the last hour typing up what was supposed to be this blog post about technology’s limited reach and the beauty of the handwritten word. as soon as i hit “publish” some glitch occurred and my post was deleted. go figure.
people are relying more heavily on email, evites and other digital media for correspondence these days. i believe technology serves a great purpose, but i also believe it’s limited reach assures us all that paper won’t die. technology is so disposable. emails get deleted, evites get lost. even this blog post will soon be buried under a pile of electronic words. receiving a handwritten lovely in the mail..now that’s something we’ll hold on to forever.
christa sorauf of connexxions (a stationery shop in greer, south carolina), puts it like this, “electronic communications serve a purpose but they are fast, fleeting and ephemeral. you can’t touch a tweet, savor your sweetheart’s quirky writing on an e-mail or put an e-vite on your refrigerator. the act of writing a note, sending a greeting card or issuing an invitation is one of the most personal and emotional communications you can send. the recipient acknowledges that by the importance they place on them.”
at a recent family gathering with my in-laws, my husband’s grandpa told us all about stacks of mail he had kept over the years for each of his 5 children. when they moved to distant states or could only use mail to communicate, he would keep every letter he received. he has, since then, returned the stacks to each child who now have beautiful reminders of life in other countries, weddings, births, and other life milestones. the level of importance their family has placed on these notes goes much deeper than that placed on any email i can think of.
we need to teach people the joy of receiving mail. in return, i believe they will learn the joy of sending it too.
send someone you love a handwritten letter today.
