Category : Blogs
Sub Category : LifeStyle
Do you notice how social media platforms entice you with a promise of bringing people closer? How they bait you with the idea of keeping in touch with family and friends is made possible with just a click of the keyboard or keypad? How they sold the idea of this breakthrough in technology would actually help to improve communications and relationships? But if you look at all social media platforms today, how much of that is really true? Most of the things done on social media be it selfies or posts on walls, are all done in a very public and impersonal way. Can you really call that "communicating" or "connecting"...? The most you'll get are 'likes' and comments from people who are actually bothered to look at whatever you post. How is that bringing people closer? I mean this breakthrough in technology was sold to us with the pretense that it would bring us closer. We write so much about ourselves in the hope that someone actually believes in the pretense that it has taught us to be. In the process of not wanting to be 'left out', we have forgotten who we are.
I may be old school but I feel the best way to communicate and stay in touch is through written letters. You write the date at the top of your letter, followed by 'Dear so and so', to me, that adds the much overlooked 'personal touch' and intimacy. You are addressing just one specific person and communicating with just that person and sharing your news with just them instead of the whole world. To me, that's real communication and intimacy.
For the most part, people's excuse for choosing social media platforms or emails to communicate is because they are busy. Life is too hectic. They don't have the time to sit down and write a proper letter or queue at the post office to mail a letter. All I can say is, if you genuinely want to communicate and keep in touch with people who matter to you, you can make an effort to find the time to write.
The other famous excuse is that snail mails take too long to arrive compared to emails. But hey, the waiting and anticipation, that's what makes written letters a lot more meaningful.
Just for a moment, try to picture this.... You holding a piece of paper in your hand, reading words written by a loved one with the absence of spell check. Seeing a word crossed out with a single line or completely obliterated with a chaotic scribble. Deep grooves of the heavy pen pusher or the odd slant of a lefty. A letter where so many words spill out the writer runs out of room and writes on the side of the page with arrows pointing to the continuation of their words, or better yet, they break their spacing and squish words closer together. Sentences piled on top of each other. Awful penmanship that is hard to decipher. Loopy cursive. Long letters in which you see the words fade because the pen used ran out of ink and then be replaced with another colour. Letters scented with perfume or sealed with lipstick kisses, folded neatly, edges so sharp you know they diligently ran their nail along the folded crease. The formality of ‘yours sincerely’ or ‘best regards’, or the more personal, 'lots of love' or 'love always'. And the always present 'P.S.' tagged at the end.
Now, that's the care and attention, the personal touch of written letters. The expressions of affection. Correspondence from one’s heart spilled across a piece of paper. I don't know about you, but to me, that's what I call real communication. That is what a real connection in wanting to stay close should look like.
