A Letter? For Me?

By Haley Aguirre

I have tried hard to remember which birthday it was when I was gifted my first set of personalized greeting cards. There was an elegant lavender “H” on each card, with a single vine of leaves decorating the letter. The white background gave me room to write and draw on them. They seem to have been a constant presence in my life, lacking a beginning. The art of letter writing in general however, has just about come to an end.

It was not any day in particular, just sometime during elementary school, not too long ago. In my first five years I wrote letters to my cousins who lived abroad. We struggled to form complete sentences at that age, but loved the idea of sending things half way across the globe to a friend and receiving something in return. In a way, it was a gift exchange, which made running out to the mailbox everyday a bit of an exciting mystery. In first and second grade, my class wrote to pen pals. We never met those whom we addressed letters to, but they were students our age attending a school just like ours. Somehow we could talk to them and get to know them by putting pen to paper. Quite fascinating when you think about it! By the end of elementary school, most thoughts or efforts to write letters had fizzled out. My lavender greeting cards remained in my in my desk, however, in case any opportunity rose to write again.

Okay, enough of the nostalgic talk. There is real discussion going on about this. Could writing letters be a forgotten pastime, a dying breed of communication, a sad reminder of how technical everything seems to be becoming? Or has it become more appreciated than it ever was before? The image to the right helps explain it.

It all depends on the norm of the time. Which is new, rare, and exciting: instant message or paper mail? Which one do you anxiously anticipate receiving while stuck at school, work, or on the bus? But then again, it does not have to be what is cool at the time...letters can just mean a lot because they naturally do mean a lot. The Art of Manliness authors Brett & Kate McKay write, “Sending a letter is the next best thing to showing up personally at someone’s door.” They are practically artifacts or heirlooms, nothing virtual. We’re talking real paper you can grasp in your hands and cherish longer than 10 seconds. Communicating this way can be the sincerest way to display how much you care, because writing a letter takes time and effort. It is a chance to be artistic in language, thoughtful in message, and caring in penmanship.

This does not require a melted red wax seal, fountain pen, or even personalized paper. No one needs to send four pages of reading to their peers and loved ones. The fact of the matter is that writing letters is pretty cool, and it will always be there as a creative and joyful outlet for conversation…a weeks-to-months long conversation. Lol, like millennials have the patience for that!

So though you don’t have to, I encourage you, write away my friends. Write away...