Last week a letter arrived addressed to me. It was from a dear friend whom I haven’t seen for many years, but still feel incredibly close to. We keep in infrequent but regular contact, almost exclusively through letters, sometimes accompanied by the odd photograph to show how much has changed in the appearance of our children - and how little in our own!
Letter-writing is increasingly hailed as a ‘lost art’ – it seems that nobody has time for it any more now that services like WhatsApp and Facebook messenger have made contact with friends living abroad free. While writing letters certainly isn’t appropriate for every relationship, and is no substitute for a phone call, I find it a real joy.
I’ve written before about the benefits of expressive writing, and while the letter-writing I mean in this case is very different as it’s aimed at someone other than yourself, the act of writing your thoughts down can still be very helpful in processing them.
I also think letter-writing creates a unique connection with another person – the feeling of holding something in your hand which another person has also held is very powerful. A Facebook message can’t come close to that.
That isn’t to say that Facebook messaging or WhatsApp or whatever other more modern method you might use doesn’t have its own value. Being able to instantly connect with someone is very important too. But there are some relationships for which letter-writing is perfect. I find that it works best with friends I don’t see very often, and who perhaps live abroad, making it harder to call them or send messages in the same time zone. Writing letters encourages us to keep in touch, as because of the time lag of a few weeks per letter it’s easy to keep the correspondence going, rather than a chat message simply tailing off.
American Hannah Brencher was at a low point in New York when she discovered that writing a love letter to a stranger made her feel better. She later founded a global organisation which does just that - More Love Letters is a network of people who write love letters to those who request them, in the hope of spreading happiness. Since its foundation in 2011 the group have written 250,000 love letters to people in more than 73 countries.
Hannah has since written a book, If you Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers. In it she writes about the unique vulnerability of writing letters: “You can tell a completely different story to someone when you’ve got all the vulnerable space of a page to back you up. You can say things you might not have the courage to say elsewhere. You can let honestly loose on the page and then fold it up and drop it in the mailbox. Away, away the release of your troubles could fly.”
When was the last time you wrote a letter? When was the last time something came through your letterbox that wasn’t a bill or bank statement? It may be slower than an online message, but letter-writing can offer a unique connection with another person, as well as a soothing writing experience and the irresistible excitement of getting post through the door.