The lost art of writing letters
Updated: 2 hours ago
I have been thinking for a while about the lost art of writing letters, and it appears when I look at Instagram that I am not alone. The algorithms of Instagram are so refined that it feels as though it is reading my mind!
I used to write letters regularly and what would often make my day was receiving a letter in return. With the internet came email, which was thrilling - the thought writing a letter to someone in another country with the possibility of receiving one in return minutes later!
I would exchange long emails with my friends and family after I moved abroad. We detailed our experiences and thoughts on a regular basis, and our correspondence became a precious record of our lives.
Enter Facebook: some of my friends would post their news updates there, which inadvertently made them less personal and also removed the need to ask them for their news.
We thought we were saving trees by writing our letters online
WhatsApp marked another backward step posing as progress. I started communicating with my family and friends in various WhatsApp groups. Our messages became more frequent but also shorter.
Memes, viral joke videos and AI finally took another chunk out of what was personal in this kind of communication. All you have to do is click ‘share’ and ‘like’ to 'keep in touch'. Even birthday wishes are automatically generated or predictive text one-liners with the usual emojis added on. 🎂 🥳 🎈
We thought we were saving trees by going paperless!
On the level of human connection, all this is regrettable. We lost connection, and in many ways we stopped recording history.
A box of letters
Think of the boxes of letters and postcards our grandparents left behind - each letter penned in beautiful handwriting on delicate tissue paper.
Every word was carefully considered, always keeping the reader and the relationship in mind, adding kind words of affection near the end of each letter.
You can pick up these old letters and feel something, just by looking at them: a letter that was clearly written on a moving train because the handwriting is so jittery; and then you read a letter from a few years later written in jittery handwriting because the writer had aged.
My mother-in-law gave me a box of letters that my husband sent her when he was in his 20s - they hold his thoughts, opinions and values, and his voice as a young man, long before I knew him. I am treasuring them for our daughter to read when she is older.
Lost in the ether
I will never have a box of my own letters to pass on - my many emails from all those years ago are parked somewhere in the ether. But anyway, that collection of electronic words does not have the soul contained in an old box of letters that were physically touched by their writer.
But all is not lost: The Sunday Letter Project
The Sunday Letter Project is one of a number of initiatives gathering pace that encourages people to take up writing letters again.
You can sign the Sunday Letter Project's pledge on their website - it is essentially a promise to yourself to take an act of self care once a week:
I pledge to write one letter each Sunday -
to myself or someone else - as an act of reflection,
connection and calm.
I believe in the power of carving out a pocket of time
for myself and I am committed to embracing this
ritual as a way of creating balance in my life.
The Sunday Letter Project
You can write to strangers around the world, to your family and friends, or to yourself. Both the physical activity of putting pen to paper, and the process of expressing your thoughts in writing are so good for our mental health. And it is a really important form of human connection.
I have signed the pledge and I look forward to handwritten letters becoming a part of my life again - calm reflection and connection at the weekend, no screens involved. The letters will never be 'data' - they will only belong to me and their recipients.
What a beautiful thing!
