I exchange email correspondence and Facebook messages. I always have my cell phone with me. I stay connected with my family in those ways although I have stopped short of texting and tweeting. I savor engagement in these ways but I can't help but remember the difference in sitting down to write a letter and getting to settled to enjoy reading one. Our electronic communications are immediate, instant gratification but briefer, to the point, with less feeling apparent. Somehow posting a smiley face says so much less than a few sentences about feeling happy.
I have used the same expression most do in referring to mailbox content as "snail mail" - of course it is slower! Just like many others, I now do my banking and much of my shopping online. I love the internet tools available for researching, writing, and communication. I am not suggesting we go back, only that we consider what may be lost in the progress and that we become more intentional in retrieving engagement and intimacy in our communications. Maybe that is one of the reasons I choose to post weekly on my three blogs.
To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart. ~ Phyllis Theroux
P. S. The photograph above is a letter I wrote to my parents in 1963 while I was planning my wedding (December 28, 1963). I found it recently when I was going through one of the many boxes belonging to her I have sorted and filed since her death in 2006. I wonder if there will be any letters for my granddaughters to read in 50 years. Somehow, printed emails don't seem to be keepers. Who knows? They may keep digital scrapbooks which have a file for their children's letters. I just hope the messages of the heart will be in them.
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