David Eide – Opinion Columnist
Personally, I think there’s something magical about receiving letters. Now I don’t mean bills or the other kinds of automated mail that so clutter mailboxes these days. I mean a letter that was handwritten, sealed, stamped, and traveled potentially hundreds of miles and passed through who knows how many hands in order to end up at your door. I didn’t fully realize how wonderful letters could be until I recently started writing and sending them off myself; what started as a one-off quickly grew into a hobby that I’m enjoying more and more every week. I really think that the vast majority of people would find some enjoyment in letter writing, so it’s quite a shame to see that it’s essentially a dying art these days.
Of course some people will argue that letter writing should be a dying art, after all hasn’t email essentially rendered ‘snail mail’ obsolete? There is some validity to this point. However, to me, the appeal of letter writing goes beyond the simple binary of convenient or inconvenient. Emails are an entirely ephemeral medium; they can be typed up incredibly easily and can be disposed of just as easily.
Furthermore, the fact that emails don’t actually have a physical existence of their own and instead rely on devices for display which has the effect of making emails a much less meaningful form of communication. While I appreciate emails for professional communication with people who I may not know very well, for general interpersonal communication they come up lacking.
In comparison, letters are a much better form of remote interpersonal communication. For one, the fact that a letter usually has to be handwritten forces a certain amount of effort upon the sender which means more personality usually shines through. The tactile nature of letters is another facet of letters that I find appealing, it’s one thing to communicate by email which are basically just words on a screen and another to be able to hold the communication in your own hands. Letters also carry with them a sense of mystery and surprise that you don’t really get from emails.
Generally, you don’t know when a letter you send will be received and on the other hand the recipient often doesn’t know that a letter has been sent, so in a sense, both parties will be surprised in a way. Of course, there is also the surprise of actually finding out what has been written in the letter which you don’t often get with emails since those usually have text previews. There is a level of anticipation that comes with opening a letter that is simply not present when it comes to emails. Overall, I think letters have a distinct advantage over emails just in terms of pure aesthetics.
In a deeper sense I also think that letters allow our true selves to shine through much more than email does. This might just be specific to me, but I’ve found that when I write emails my personality often comes across as overly stilted and polished. This is perhaps due to the fact that if I have second thoughts, I can simply delete the word and retype the phrase. This option is much more difficult with letters, of course you could erase or cross out the offending words but that leaves a very distinct trace that almost defeats the point of changing it in the first place. You could also choose to keep buying new cards to start over with but that seems like it would begin to strain your wallet fairly quickly. I’ve always felt that the letters I write capture who I am much better than emails, partially because I don’t try to make them as efficient as possible, simply allowing my thoughts to flow forth onto the card.
Another reason I have come to appreciate writing and sending letters is the lengthy journey they can often go through. I have sent letters across Minnesota, to Arkansas, and even as far as California and yet they all still arrived within a week or two. The idea that an intercontinental odyssey is undergone by my mail every time I want to say ‘hello’ to one of my distant relatives or wish someone ‘happy birthday’ is very impressive in my opinion.
I love how letters tie us together, creating a network across the continent that enabled a sense of interconnectedness long before the internet made such a thing a triviality. In a sense, every time I send a letter, I am following in a tradition that stretches back to when congress first authorized the institution of a postal system in the 1st article of the Constitution.
Of course, none of this would be possible without the work of the United States Postal Service which works very hard to ensure that the mail gets where it’s supposed to go. It is unfortunate that the postal service has suffered from budget shortfalls and other misfortunes due to some new policies by Congress. Luckily, action has finally been taken to alleviate the struggles of the USPS, advancing forth the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 which greatly reforms the organization’s finances and operations to hopefully keep it solvent for years to come.
It is good that Congress is finally paying more attention to the USPS as it is a crucial part of our country’s heritage and enables many of the positives towards letter writing that I have described throughout the rest of this article. The hardworking men and women of the US Postal Service deserve our support and I am glad that we are capable of coming together to do so. I love to write and to send letters, and hopefully this article has convinced you to give it a shot as well.