On a dreary Tuesday morning, I walked downstairs to leave for my 8am class when I noticed an envelope in my mailbox. Â Excited as a five year old on Christmas morning, I fumbled for my keys, opened the mailslot, and pulled out a crisp envelope with my name and address on the front. Â This was one of dozens of cards that I have received throughout the school year, but I still get a little overly excited each time.
I opened the envelope to find a sweet note from a dear, dear friend of mine who goes to school several hours away. Â She gave me a quick update on her life and told me that she often tells her friends she has a friend who is “basically Taylor Swift”. Â A meaningful phrase was carefully written across the top and the note was signed in a familiar, extremely neat handwriting that I had enveyed for a few years.
In this day and age, where technology fills every corner of our lives and communication revolves around typed out words on a screen, there is something particularly special about receiving a handwritten letter in the mail. Â Maybe it’s the fact that they took time out of their day to pick out stationary, write a note, buy a stamp, and walk it to a mail center. Â Maybe it’s seeing something created by human hands, rather than the electrical wires inside of a machine. Â Maybe it’s the familiarity of a handwriting or the way words seem a little more alive when they are written in pen or the way your grandmother always includes a crisp $5 bill. Â And maybe it’s a combination of it all.
I try to set aside fifteen minutes a week to write someone a note. Â To let them know I’m thinking of them. Â To remind them that they are important in my life. Â It’s possible that I’m the only person in the world that still gets excited about getting mail at the age of nineteen. Â If that’s the case, the world is becoming a very dull place. Â I like to think optimistically, though. Â I think we all still get a twinge of excitement when we see our name scrawled across the front of an envelope with a stamp in the upper right hand corner. Â If fifteen minutes is all it takes to give someone that feeling, it’s fifteen minutes well spent.
Instead of starting your next episode of Grey’s Anatomy at 9pm, start it at 9:15 instead. Â Send your cousins or your grandpa or your friend from camp that you haven’t spoken to in 6 months a note. Â I think the world is changing one handwritten note at a time. Â Do you?