letters and Lasting legacies
With the sheer quantity of emails and texts nowadays, I can’t help but wonder if the art of letters, and meaningful writings as a whole are getting lost with time.
When we go to museums and look at the preserved letters of historical figures, we are reading their personal stories, pieces of their humanity that would have died with them if they hadn’t been written down. If we did not have Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail or Henry VIII’s love letters to Anne Boleyn, how different would our perception of history be? What will our legacies be if future historians have only our TikTok comment sections to define who we were and what we stood for?
a word to the wise
The technological advancements of the last few decades are obviously revolutionary. I use them every day. However, as we integrate them into our routines, they also become a crutch. Something we rely on more with every passing day; any task we deem menial and even some that require emotional communication are delegated to machines. Society is so saturated with synthetics that the human touch seems to be growing scarce.
Recently, when I was in a state of panic about this reality, thinking that my entering the job market in this era would mean fighting Artificial Intelligence for work, a wise woman reminded me that when something becomes scarce, it becomes valuable. It is the person whose humanity and creativity remain sharply intact through our communal brain atrophy that will be sought after. The person who takes the time to think deeply, to create things with intention, effort, and heart. What becomes truly valuable is the artist.
There is endless strength in our own minds. The beautiful mistakes they make. The spelling errors, improper grammar, and crossed-out words become evidence of presence. Proof that a real person was here, thinking, feeling, demanding recognition.
Close the distance
Going to university in Northern Scotland, 5000 miles away from my home in Los Angeles, it is easy for me to feel disconnected from friends and family. I am eternally grateful for FaceTime calls that magically shrink the long distance in seconds. But there is nothing tangible about those calls. They vanish the moment you hang up. While our minds are strong, mere memories can be hard to hold onto.
Letters, on the other hand, are a physical manifestation of love.
Take the time and put in the effort to carefully curate each word you write. Even the seemingly simple act of putting pen to paper is an endangered act in our 21st-century technology hegemon. I would wager that many of us have loved ones whose handwriting we would not be able to identify. When you really think about it, outside of primary school assignments and the occasional thank you card your mom made you write, when do you really pick up a pen?
Most people, myself included, use Google Calendar and a notes app for to-do lists. Our handwriting has become a relic of childhood.
feeling the loss of literacy
Taking in-person, handwritten exams for the first time in years, I was genuinely worried my script would be illegible, or my hand would cramp up from the foreign feeling of using a pen for more than the rare receipt signature. It feels pathetic to admit this was a concern of mine going into exams, but why wouldn’t it have been? My natural environment has long sounded of fingertips on keys rather than ballpoints scratching across pages.
I feel similarly towards ebooks and Kindles. I’m not against them at all; texting and FaceTime, they are convenient, accessible, and incredibly useful in our evolving world. I’d be remiss to deny that.
But I will always prefer the feeling of physically turning a page. The weight of a book in my hands. Notes in the margins, random objects as bookmarks, the way a story occupies space in the physical world. It is the same reason a handwritten note feels different from a typed message: it truly exists. It can be held. Saved. Rediscovered.
writing is human
Writing — physically writing — is good for your brain. It slows down your thoughts, forces intention, makes you sit with your words before firing them off into the digital void.
I’m sure most of us have had a teacher tell us that handwriting notes improves memory, comprehension, and emotional processing. They were right, but if you are someone who needs science to prove it to you, thousands of studies back this up, and you are more than welcome to do your own research. Knock yourselves out! But beyond science, I think the best reason is that it simply feels more human.
It makes me think of my dear sweet grandmother, who spends countless hours crafting holiday cards from scratch for my entire family. She puts us all to shame. We rely on animated responses that pop up in our iPhones’ text bar. The suggested “I love you” and prewritten “sounds good” might be convenient, but they definitely aren’t personal.
What’s next for this generation? Are we that far away from AI wedding vows? Or outsourced love letters? Maybe you’d call me an extremist, and you’d probably be right, but that doesn’t negate the fact that there is a real fear here. We have strayed too far from our historical literacy. I am not the only one who feels it. There is proof in the number of us turning back towards analogue hobbies; we have technological fatigue. We want to feel like active participants in our lives again, not just operators of them.
How I keep writing and waiting
Whether this is a small act of rebellion against the digital age or simply a tribute to my crafty grandma and our shared love of the written word, I am not sure, but whatever the reason, I am now the proud owner of a paper planner. It’s a little thing. Being able to use the phrase “I’ll pencil you in” with earnest. To highlight and color coordinate my class schedule by hand. Sometimes it’s inconvenient to shuffle a notebook out of my purse just so I can check my availability, but it makes my days feel more intentional. I’ve learned to revel in the time it takes. I think sometimes we all need a reminder like that, one telling us, or gently forcing us, to slow down.
None of this means that I am going to stop texting my loved ones or resort to carrier pigeons. I am simply going to sit down at my desk and write them a letter. I will seal it up, address it, and spend the egregious £4.50 to send my labor of love across the world so that they might be able to read and touch something I wrote just for them. They’ll see my handwriting and my scribbled-out sentences as physical evidence that I paused my life long enough to think of them.
Maybe that’s what letters are — pauses. Just brief ones, between beats of busy lives, where you hold a writer’s heart in your hands. Then you tuck it away in some dusty shoebox with the hope that, one day, you’ll pick it up again and be able to find a pulse within its words.