I was reading an article on HubSpot about the postal service and it gave me pause. The article pretty much advocates getting rid of the postal system all together. Go green and save trees and all. In part, I am right there. I do think that most people now use the internet for connecting and hand written letter writing is dead as we have known it. Or at least people my age and older have known it. And the paper we save would be incredible. I agree 100% on that one and am all for it.
I am in complete agreement to ending the Saturday mail, and would even support another day, like the middle of the week as a day off. But to do away with it all together would be sad in my eyes. We still have millions of home bound elderly whose only contact with the outside world comes in the form of hand written letters. Hand written you say??
If you are groaning at that idea, then you are young!
I grew up in the 50's and 60's. When I was a kid it was expected that one would hand write a thank you note for a gift, or repsond to a hand written letter with a hand written letter. It was a fantastic thing for me. I had a best friend who was elderly and home bound, who lived states away from me. We corresponded through my entire childhood and into college before she passed away in her 90's. I remember waiting for the mail in anticipation of her letters, and would imagine it was more so for her. Now, I have shoe boxes full of letters from her and after she passed, I recieved my letters back. I can follow her through her illness and see how she remained an optimist, and how it gave me that same spirit. She was a shining light in an other wise dark childhood.
Today I still have the habit of hand writing letters to the elderly in my life, mainly because I remember what it meant to my childhood friend. She gave me the empathy to understand the lonliness of the inbound and the little it takes to completely cheer their whole day with something as simple as a hand written letter. The appreciation that someone took the time out of their busy day to write is a lost art, and I am really saddened by it. The young people in my life do not understand the impact of it.
I can see that, as we who were old enough to remember and appreciate this lost art go away, hand written letters will be a thing of the past. The elderly who can no longer sit in front of a computer will be lost with no way to communicate. It is a scary thought for me. I will miss those hand written letters that I get from my elderly frineds. I will miss the art of journaling in letters to the people I love. And I will miss that connection from them.
I do think that the Postal Service needs an overhaul. There has to be an answer. It needs to be treated like any business, in order to pay for itself. I know this sounds sappy. But I do hope that, at least in my lifetime, I will see the ability to continue to send and receive those hand written letters in the future.
Whose day are you making?
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