After nearly 56 years on this planet, I think I may have finally figured out the whole “New Year” thing. I do not make resolutions – at least not any that impact my waistline. I will not keep them. An anniversary, my birthday, Arbor Day – some celebration will come up and all will be lost. I will then find myself defeated and adrift in a sea of guilt.
I still believe in making annual sacred oaths to myself, but I am trying to come up with some that I will actually keep. For this to work, I must remove temptation from the equation. Temptation is my undoing every year, and I think I have found something that fits the bill: Letter-writing. I am going to write letters.
I stopped regularly writing letters in the late 1980s, well before technology got in the way of this increasingly lost art. I used to blame “real life” for my abrupt departure from writing letters. My professional career began in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I assumed that once I became a responsible working person,
I was too busy to sit down and craft a letter. I was lying to myself.
My grandfather, Cam Albin, ran a trona plant in Wyoming in the late ‘80s, yet he managed to find time to regularly write letters to his nine children and 25 grandchildren. Of course, my grandparents were from a time when writing letters was really the only means of consistent communication with long-distance friends and loved ones. It was a tradition they passed along to me by, quite simply, writing me letters when my father’s stint in the Army took my family around the world. My aunts and uncles were in on it, too. As a child, I loved going to the mailbox, because I knew there was a good chance I would find a letter from someone. I miss that feeling.
What is the point of writing letters these days? Anymore, if I want to communicate with someone, all I have to do is grab my phone and tune into social media.
Writing letters was especially important 40, even 50 years ago, because making a phone call was not as simple as reaching into my purse or pocket and dialing anyone, anywhere, anytime. Calling someone in another state – even another town – was costly. It seems like all of this was a lifetime ago. Just thinking about it makes me feel anxious, like I did when I used to watch “Little House on the Prairie” on TV and worry about what would happen if the candle Laura Ingalls was using to light her room tipped over and started a fire. How did we live before the internet, cellphones and social media?
What is the point of writing letters these days? Anymore, if I want to communicate with someone, all I have to do is grab my phone and tune into social media. I do not even have to have a conversation with whomever it is. I can simply look at their Facebook page and make all the assumptions I want about their life.(I guess I just answered my own question.) If I really want to know what is going on in the lives of the people I love, assumptions simply won’t do.
Part of what makes reading letters so magical is that we become a captive audience. We stop and take the time to read and digest the sender’s thoughts before we respond. I guess this means what I really want to do differently in 2024 is make real time for the people I love. I don’t have to send a letter to do that. I can save the 66-cent postage, and simply start a real conversation with someone. Talking and listening are free.
