White pastures

There was this time when my Grade 4 teacher in Language made us write a letter to someone, anyone we’d like to send our letters to. Back then, I loathed writing those – my compliance was in the form of a half-hearted letter written to someone I barely knew (If there was someone called a grand-aunt, as a dear friend told me, then she was it). Oh, and one more thing, I wrote the wrong address.

It’s been so long since that moment happened, and I certainly value written correspondence more than I ever did at any point in my past, except perhaps for one day in my sophomore year in high school when I wrote a friend, “Can we still be friends?”. (Embarrassing, I know.) Today, the importance and place of written letters have been mostly reduced to writing business letters and formal letters. This is only my hunch, for all I know there could be more. But the fact that I received two letters for the past 4 years says a lot.

Hey, I’m not bitter about receiving just two letters. What I’m trying to point out is that the value of writing letters has been reduced to something like a painting in a museum, or the day’s special meal/food in a café. It’s just something you don’t expect to get everyday. One reason I can point out: the Internet. Its existence allows for the speedy posting of blog entries, among others, not to mention that it’s more convenient to wait about 30 minutes for a person to finish writing and posting a blog entry than to wait for 2 days or more to receive a letter. It’s no surprise more and more people choose to blog and comment on them.

It’s the same reason I would like to bring back the art of writing snail mail, among other things. The pace of today’s lifestyle can be at times dizzying and at other times, exasperating. In an era where instant results are the norm, I thought that, maybe, I could slow down one way or another. Even though Facebook, Multiply, Plurk, Twitter, and other social networking sites are faster, more convenient, and arguably more visually appealing than mail and written diaries, the latter options are so much closer to my heart, at least for me, for some cheesy reason you might already know (that is, if you know me).

One way or another, these handwritten stuff are now considered old-school by the majority of us who know of more efficient methods of sending messages. However, as someone who had loved writing ever since I was…young (can’t remember what age), I’m inclined to say that these scribbled letters look more sincere and special.

It isn’t totally old, don’t you think?