I fell in love with writing letters at a fairly young age. One day, my best friend Kelly and I decided to create new names for ourselves and send each other a letter every week detailing our hopes, dreams, worries, joys, even boys we had crushes on — basically everything and anything that was going on in our lives. It was like we came straight out of a Jane Austen book (or so we’d like to think). Every letter was hand written, in cursive, grammatically correct, and even our fake names resembled past identities (Annabel and Genevieve). We wrote these letters to each other around the age of 14 and 15. Currently, as 19- and 21-year-olds, we share this special memory and we’ll cherish it forever. Throughout this experience, Kelly and I were greatly influenced by the famous, romantic poet John Keats *swoons* (1795-1821) whose hundreds of love letters and poems to his love, Fanny Brawne are now currently documented in books everywhere. The point is, we stumbled across this adoration for letter writing, but it served so much more than just a hobby: it was therapeutic, calming, and it brought us closer as friends.
I think everyone should hand write letters and have a specific pen pal at least once in their life, even if it’s for a short amount of time. Whether it’s your best friend that lives five minutes away from you or someone in another part of the world, writing and receiving letters is a beautiful past time that will benefit your life.
Why Letters? What’s the Point?
To me, letters are timeless. Receiving a personalized, hand written letter never grows old. Sure, sending a text is the preferred way to communicate now a days, but to me, it feels a little impersonal. When we send a text, typically there’s no deep thought behind what we’re saying; the phone usually does most of the thinking for us and eventually, with the click of a button, that message will disappear into a cyber garbage bin where we'll never see it again. However, when we write a letter, we’re forced to think deeply and genuinely about our words because once we slip that envelope in the mailbox, there’s no turning back. Sure, we could easily throw a letter away, burn it, rip it up, but because letters are so enduring, it's unlikely we'll forget what was written on that page.
Letters are also mini time machines. I have a box of letters from people I deeply care for, but rarely speak to anymore. When I start to miss them, I sit there and read their words from years ago and all of a sudden I’m taken back to that specific time when we connected. It's easy to see how much we've grown as people simply by reading words on a page. I remember my best friend and I looking at the letters we wrote to each other and chuckling reading what our "concerns" were at the time: crushes and high school "drama." It was satisfying reading these letters because we didn't have to be concerned with false memories and wondering if we even changed at all: the letters documented all of it.
Not only is a letter a time machine in paper format, but letters work as pause buttons. It happens to me constantly where I’m having a crazy day and I’ll check the mail and find a letter from my Nana. The second I begin reading, the world stops for a second and I find myself refocused and calm. It’s hard to slow down when we have such busy lives, but taking time to write to someone you love or read something from a loved one is the perfect time stopper .
We may never be John Keats, Jane Austen, or even Noah Calhoun, but I think it's to our benefit to at least try and mimic their dedication to written words. I wholeheartedly believe that writing letters and writing in general relives stress, puts life into perspective, and helps to refocus our lives, so I say, give it a shot. Put down the cell phone, grab some paper and a pen, dive deep into your heart, and grace someone with your powerful words.
