Letters

There’s a certain beauty in waiting. In waiting for a letter to arrive. It’s a seemingly mundane beauty; one that’s been lost, now the relic of an ever-so-recent past which lies just beyond reach. I’ve never mailed a letter in my life- why would I? The notion seems strange now. I can reach pretty much anyone right away. A brief text message is all it takes to communicate with my parents, my friends, or my girlfriend. In an instant, a shining burst of light would transmit my every aching thought to them. The briefest glance at my choice of social networking platform is all that’s required to know what virtually all of my old acquaintances are up to. In a way, it makes the world feel small. But not too long ago, we used to wait. We used to write letters, and then wait to receive one in turn. It’s strange to think about. And yet what’s stranger still is how I feel an irrepressible longing for the beauty of waiting, and the enchanting romance contained within the handwritten words of a letter.

Letters are poetry. Snapshots of frozen time, and memories made manifest, to be preserved. We meticulously craft our words, delicately placing ink upon paper to form each letter and signing our name at the bottom. In these unspoken yet unmistakably real thoughts, we capture a vibrant tapestry of our selves. It carries with it a sense of intimacy that is utterly drained by the oppressive glare of digital text, which is destined to fade away and be lost to time. It’s why I’ve always tried to keep a journal- for what is a journal if not a collection of letters from your past self? It’s also why, on the 20th of every month, my girlfriend and I have made it a ritual to exchange handwritten letters with one another. The sudden feeling of gentle warmth they kindle remains each time, never losing its potency. I keep all of them in a drawer by my desk, and frequently revisit them to hear the words echo softly again in my head, to feel the pages float tenderly upon my fingers. It seems so insignificant, and yet it captures something intangible, which lies within the gray space in between spoken words and digital messages. To write down how we really feel, to be vulnerable, and be seen by one another is to fulfill a fundamental human impulse. But still, we don’t wait. Indeed, when she and I first began earnestly talking to one another, we were promptly separated by a long school break and thousands of miles. It was only through the convenience of instant messaging that we were able to remain in such close contact. It’s in this sense that I’m undoubtedly a hypocrite- would I ever willingly give up the ability to so easily transcend any distance to reach those I love? Of course not.

Despite this, I’m still hopelessly enraptured by the beauty of waiting. Time to wait is time to contemplate. It casts a thick cloud of wistful reflection over nearly everything. And the moment it arrives is made all the more poignant because of it- it’s part of what makes us feel alive. I recently visited the National Postal Museum in Washington, DC. Here, they had a particularly moving exhibit on old letters received by soldiers in the Second World War from their parents and wives. One can only imagine the feeling of receiving these letters after weeks of agonizing waiting, with so much time spent so far away from home. That we still read these letters today reflects the impenetrably rich human lives contained within them. This sense of time stands in stark juxtaposition to our modern world. Everywhere we go, a chorus of a million flashing lights scream in shattering urgency- “We want it now”, they loudly shout. And of course, my peers and I have been raised to think this way from the very beginning. To demand it all, and all of it right now. A demand that is promptly met, providing immediate gratification. For everything is at our fingertips- every inch of empty space in our heads filled with infinity.

And still, it feels as though in this, something has been lost. But exactly what is somewhat difficult to articulate. Perhaps this is where the intense longing for a past that was before our time comes from. A yearning for lost meaning, taken away from us by a world which has irreversibly changed, and with it fundamentally altered the nature of our relationships with one another. The shining screens in our pockets have become a silver stage for which we perform for more people than ever before, obscuring the selves that long to be seen. And perhaps this foregone past is unjustly romanticized- in fact, it’s one we never even lived. This notion is, of course, nothing new; humans have always been disillusioned with “modern” life, idealizing seemingly simpler times, whether justified or not. Yet regardless, we are faced each time with a difficult but timeless truth- that for better or for worse, the present is inescapable, and the past is gone. We are hopelessly trapped in the world we were born to, only able to dream that something real might last in the chaos of incessant change. Nor do I believe that we would truly escape if we even could. It is thus in this sense that we are truly trapped. And so it seems that we will never mail a letter. We might never again know the beauty of waiting.