A gift from the past

Writing has become somewhat of a dying art, well hand writing anyway. Long gone are the days when we would sit and compose letters to our friends and family. In our hyper-connected word, with its Twittering and Facebooking, handwritten letters are practically extinct.

And I think that is an enormous shame.

A hand written letter is so personal; it’s as close as being there in person. I have kept many letters from particularly my grandparents and they are chock full of everyday things that seem mundane and minute, but they fascinating to read now. My grandparents are long gone but I have these beautiful messages and memories from them that only a hand written letter can do. It’s a physical reminder of them and I know that they put pen to paper all those years ago and wrote especially to me. That’s what makes a hand written message so powerful; it is the thought behind it, the fact that you are special, a gift from the past.

I used to love getting letters and postcards from my grandparents. I will share one of them with you. This is from my grandmother from 1998:

“Dear Jane, Just sitting here thinking of how everyone will be spread out all over the place instead of being here. I suppose you’ve heard about the stinking hot weather we’ve had, well today it’s down to 20 degrees and its cold but we’ve had nearly 24 hours of lovely rain, my poor roses just burnt to a crisp (honestly). I’ll have to go out and cut them all off. I’ve been to the pool today, it was lovely and warm. I am back from New Zealand, it was a lovey holiday if a bit tiring towards the end. Trouble is I forget that I’m 76 and long days travelling are a bit too much but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. I saw 5 dolphins come out of the water not 2 yards away from me, I’ll never forget that. Well, I’ll take a walk and catch the post. Love you, Grandma xx”.

Just reading these letters now, I have tears rolling down my cheeks. It’s so wonderful that I have these memories of my grandmother. As I hold it I see her curly hand writing, her special crisp writing paper with Australian flowers printed down the margin and I feel that she is still here, connecting with me through the written word. That is why it is so special to write, you cannot get the same range of emotions or the feeling of tangibility from reading a text or a Facebook post.

Receiving a letter makes us pay more attention to what is actually written than if we were to receive the same message via text. Because we have become so familiar with the distribution of messages via text we no longer see them as anything overly interesting, in fact we glaze over the message and process less of what is in the message.

I think we can all remember a time when we have received a text and our focus has been elsewhere, this dilutes the meaning and significance of what the person has sent to you. It could be important, or a request but we are too busy multi-tasking and checking out our Instagram at the same time to notice. Paper written letters force you to stop, open it and actually read what inside; it requires our attention, all of it.

In fact, writing a letter is a kind of mindfulness itself. You have to be in the present moment, thinking about the person you are writing to. It takes concentration and commitment to sit still for a period of time and forge out a personal letter. Our attention is inward and we have to think about what we are going to convey. It isn’t just a matter of sending a few emoji’s and some random “hi, how are you?” You want to write something more meaningful and let your reader know that you are thinking of them.

But I get it, handwriting takes ten times as long, it’s slow for the person to receive and mostly because people are too lazy. But I think that embracing this old fashioned custom would really help us connect again with people and ourselves.

The idea that we can write about our lives and pass it on to our children as our own legacy is wonderful. I not only love the fact that I am reading my grandmothers words today, future generations will be able to read mine (yikes, my great grandchildren will be wondering who this crazy relative was!)

Big Love Jane x