I want to write a letter

I want to write a letter to a friend of mine. He lives in Canada and I haven't seen him since we met: it's been almost two years. We met at a summer camp and while we've both returned to the camp, it's been different sessions so we haven't seen each other. Somehow though we're still in contact.

I've made plenty of other camp friends over the years of course, but I haven't consistently stayed in as close contact with pretty much anybody else except this one, crazy redhead I met on a bus to Leavenworth in July of 2007. I'm a pro-penpaller, but very few people have the same drive towards stamps and letters that I do, so it most always ends up being very one-sided conversations. Which, now that I think about it, has been the case here as well. I've only received one physical reply from Gabe, but where I send letters, he emails or Facebooks me so there's still the transmission of ideas.

The point I'm getting to is that we were talking about this the other night, and letters really are something that you treasure.

He said something that really made me think as well. It's mind boggling to think that someone's hand wrote the words you're reading and then traveled however many miles to get to you. Sure it's amazing that you can send the same amount of information in under 5 minutes, but the fact that the wrinkled piece of paper you hold in your hands traveled all that way to get to you makes it so much more special.

With how little we physically write anymore - I know plenty of college students who complain about cramped hands right after finals/midterms - taking the time to actually write a letter shows you care above and beyond. It conveys something about your personality by lacking the impersonal uniformity of type.

So the imperfections make us special and make the people we interact with feel better about it.

So then, what of perfection? Often, it takes so much more effort, but it lacks the personality, and it's the personality that enables us to connect. And like the hokey pokey, that's what it's all about.