The dying art of letter writing...

This week Stephen and Steph in jest commented on the formality of a thank you letter I sent them: it "sounded like a had a chicken up my bum." I was somewhat taken aback, though amused, by the comment.

Recently I decided to uptake again, what I percieve to be, the dying art of letter writing. In a world of business and technological communication, we have lost the sense and sensibility of handwritten cards, notes and letters. We have forgotten the etiquette of writing a thank you note for a meal shared or a kind deed rendered. We have lost the significance of prioritising the time to write a letter, or make a call to a friend or family member as a sign of love, care, responsibility and friendliness.

I was brought up writing thank you letters for gifts, and writing letters to friends and relatives, most significantly for the purpose of respect: of the person and of the social "to do". Language was also very important. When I was quite young, my letters were to be written first as a draft, so I could be checked for and rehearsed in the conventions of correct grammer and language. I still take particular note of the conventions and elegant language when writing. I have set aside Monday nights to write, looking forward to writing letters of friendship and love, cards or notes of thanks, and expressing my heart to those separated from me by distance. In this I am unapologetic.

How lovely it is when we open the mail box to find a personal letter, with a handwritten address, from a relative or friend! Let me leave you with some other's thoughts on the matter...

"What cannot letters inspire? They have souls; they
can speak; they have in them all that force which expresses the transports of
the heart; they have all the fire of our passions. They can raise them as
much as if the persons themselves were present. They have all the
tenderness and delicacy of speech, and sometimes even a boldness of expresion
beyond it." Heloise To Abelard

"It is the immemorial priviledge of letter-writers to
commit to paper things they would not say: to write in a more grandiose manner
than that in which they speak: and to enlarge upon feelings which would be
passed by unnoticed in conversation." C.S. Lewis

"Something happens to our thoughts and emotions when we
put them into a letter; they are then not the same as spoken words. They
are placed in a different, special context, and they speak at a different level,
serving the soul's organ of rumination rather than the mind's capacity for
understanding." Thomas Moore

And now, I will bid you good health, and continue to take up my pen (a beautiful Venetian Murano glass ink-dipping pen my father recently brought me back from Venice) and continue on my merry writing way... adieu