Taking us back to the years of dear old Carrier Pigeons and news by Pony Express, the world of communication moved at a slow pace until the invention of the Telegraph in the late 19th century. Since then, phones of the 21st century have swept nearly every nation, and the world has exploded in their wake. Somewhere along the way, someone came up with Snapchat and dating apps, and well, it all went downhill from there.
Dear Reader
Another one bites the dust as you hit ‘remove friend’ under the name of your last Hinge match. What happened?
Date gone bad? Bad kisser? Kissed your ass?
It’s all too easy to clear your slate, yet by choosing the easy route of starting anew, you miss out on the meaning of things becoming, well… un-old.
In a world where a click means compatibility, we’ve lost what really makes us compatible, the meaning we share in staying. Sure, we can be compatible through our Basics and Interests, but real meaning is created through itself. Your grandparents didn’t know each other any better than you and your last Hinge date did when they first met, so what makes you and Mr. Hinge of the week any different?
Modern age ‘Love’
Life moves fast, and even faster through our phones. Communications having no time to stew, fights fuming, it’s all too easy to text words into the fire. Love bombing, words of passion typed with fingers and the surface of thought. Everything is so quick that there’s arguably way too much room for error and way too many words sent without a second thought.
What would be different if we had time to dwell? Time to think on one or two situations meaningfully instead of the 20 thrown at us through our screens every minute.
In a time of 20k actions a day, it’s crucial to slow down and do greater things with greater meaning for more fulfillment. Hence, how our bored ancestors came to create strong bonds through the one or two outlets of communication they did have.
Love doesn’t just happen in the movies; it occurred in the past. What we’re missing now isn’t passion; in fact, passion is the culprit of what we’ve been flooded and drowned out with. What we’re missing now in the modern age is meaning, time spent and love letters.
Love, Letters.
The difference for my grandparents was that they only used tools that created meaning and tangibility, such as long-spent letters instead of quick sent texts. They spent hours writing and reading, trudging through grueling days waiting to hear back, while reflecting on what they had, which was letters that mattered. They created passion through knowing so much less than what we do now.
And love is passion. It’s supposed to be built up on the tension of waiting for your lover’s letter to arrive, the thought of it pulling you through the week and to them. Your grandparents might not have known how compatible they were, or if their Essentials aligned, but they knew the feelings they harbored, because they spent time creating them.
Apply Meaning to Modern Love
We want what we can’t have, the asshole or the situationship, because we used to have to wait days to get what we wanted, a letter that meant something, from someone who, because of their sparsity in one or two letters a week, started to mean everything.
Modernly, however, we find ourselves creating meaning out of nothing but bare bones and three hours on delivered. We become consumed by everything that means nothing, contemplating over read-receipts one hour, how to respond to their four-letter text the next and then spending the remainder of the night thinking about when they’ll respond to you.
In letters, we lose this grey space. A letter itself is the meaning, and it’s all the more worth the wait. You receive something that took time, thought and effort. Regardless of the words, the meaning is laid out in front of you in one simple envelope.
Meaning is created with meaning, not coincidence or compatibility.
Too often, we get caught up in the quickness of immediate cliques; love has come to rest on instantaneous compatibility. Yet our qualities depend only on ourselves, so why do we put so much meaning into how our qualities agree with someone else’s? Especially when true meaning comes from staying through the disagreeableness.
The scene has changed, and so has love; it wasn’t just better with letters, it was thriving. Love is supposed to be all-consuming because of what it means to you, not because of how much it can consume you. I mean, we’re constantly consumed by everything: social media, classwork, jobs.
When we expect love to simply exist through compatibility, we forget that it is the meaning that makes it. Love needs letters, needs thought and needs time, or else it really isn’t love at all.
Thanks for Reading!
Love, Sarah Connors.