The Revealing

When is the last time you received a letter in the mail?

Not a call to action, a book of coupons or a bill, but a hand-written bundle of words meant solely for you? 

It is cliche to call snail mail old-school, romantic or old-fashioned. The first hand-written letter is said to be attributed to Persian Queen Atossa around 500 BC, so, yes, they are certainly old; my high school English teacher often spoke of writing letters to the love of his life while he was in the Peace Corps, as it was their only means of communicating, so, yes, letters are certainly old-fashioned; and surely there are few butterflies quite like those that arrive in the stomachs of star-scrossed lovers, so certainly, letters are romantic. These cliche descriptors shed light on a thread of nostalgia for this lost art. It is obvious to name one's lack of time the culprit for not engaging in this timeless practice. But when did we become so busy? 

On my twenty-first birthday I was asked, "What will you aim to do this year?" My intention was to write letters to those I love so far away. I think I wrote three that year.

I wonder what it means to have let go of such a luxury. We clock-in to buy food in bright packages and pay the electric bill to keep our refrigerators running so that our milk will keep. But when did tomatoes become reliant on 35 degrees F? Who is Fahrenheit anyway?

We clock-in again, this time to pay for a roof that may or may not leak. Again, to put gas in the car that will get us there. Again, to take hot showers; again, again, again. Finally, we clock-in to fill our abodes with shiny things we can stare at: the glimmer of the dream. 

Take my words with a half-grain of salt-- I've never paid rent with my own actual dollars in my whole life. 

When is the last time you received a letter? If you remember, then perhaps you remember the shock-- the joy, the curiosity, the gratitude. Your name written in pen, the ink smeared over the stamp marking a single moment in its journey toward you. Did you stare at it while you walked towards a place to sit? Did you stop everything you were about to do to tear open the envelope? Or did you savor its arrival, laying it on the table until the moment arrived when you could indulge in its revealing? Maybe you set it down to relive the surprise later--to prolong the anticipation. Maybe you tore it open right there at the mailbox and read it even before acknowledging the immensity of the pleasure it might bring. Maybe it was everything it could ever be.

Receiving a letter is surely a luxury. And yet the opportunity passes us by day after day. The snail beats the hare. For easily one can see that writing a letter might have something to do with receiving this intimate gift. Or maybe the chicken came before the egg. Regardless of how our world began, or what animal analogy we're concerned with, it is clear that we deny one another the most gratifying experiences day after day. I am not one to administer responsibility for the happiness of others to others alike; in fact I often feel defensive at times when others come to my rescue, Here, dainty gal, let me do that for you. But a plain and simple reality is that we are all, each of us, entangled in other people's shit-- and equally brightened in other people's light.

We are shaping our world every single day with our shit and our light. We are spreading ourselves like cheese on the bread that our fellow earthlings consume day in and day out. Our actions spread like wildfire and our non-actions like microscopic debris-- I never took Physics but this world of instant access to information tells me that particulates are cause for concern because they reduce visibility. Will we see each other or fill our atmosphere with the blinding soot of never having enough time?

My call to action, my book of coupons, my bill to you is this-- ask yourself a little question that may or may not have an astronomical impact on you or someone else but will surely shape the world we are living in: When is the last time you sent a letter in the mail?