Stopping Time with One Line
The art of hand-writing letters seems to be falling to the wayside in this era of electronic mail, text messaging, SMS, and cell phones. In my heart I know that if I am lucky enough to receive any sentiment, be it by email, phone call, or letter, then I am blessed, but whenever a hand-written letter comes to me I can't help but be giddy. There is something special about seeing a piece of mail addressed neatly to your name.
I recently received a batch of letters. Each was hand-written, and each came from a girl in a scout troop in the U.S.A. As I went through each of the twelve letters and tried to decipher the scrawling, loopy, and bubbly handwriting, I smiled. Did these young letter writers realize the beautiful gift they had just bestowed upon me?
At first I thought it was the scent attached to each letter that struck a chord within me. As I opened envelope after envelope and carefully unfolded paper, I'd catch a whiff of the scents surrounding each girl. There were the fruity smells of hand lotions. The deep musky smell of ink spilling onto paper, and every once in a while I swore I smelled the aroma of home cooking. I held each and every one of those twelve letters to my nostrils and inhaled deeply. I was never disappointed.
The various and distinctive paper each girl chose to write her letter on spoke volumes about her personality. The bold, sharp fluorescent colors, the timid, pale pastels, and the sweet, almost endearing, kitten tracks that crawled up one sheet thrilled me to no end. Soft floral patterns smattered one letter. Wild, crazy leopard spots dotted another. One was written on blank white paper, but the author had taken the time to carefully burn the edges in a gilded fashion. Every time my fingers held a new and uniquely beautiful sheet of paper in my hands, I felt warm inside.
When I sat and read the written words of each letter, I noted the various methods of communication each girl used. Some wrote with nearly flawless grammar. The body and styling of their letters was almost textbook perfect. Others wrote casually, as if they were standing face-to-face with me. Some scrawled wild thoughts as quickly as they occurred, thoughts that outwardly had no cohesive strand but were strung all together anyway. Always, the words they used and the thoughts they shared with me were sacred. Always, I felt honored.
Twelve unique, varying, brilliant, funny, sensitive and caring letters came to me that day. Although they all had the same purpose, to let me know they thought of me, none of them was alike, except for the closing statements.
At the end of each letter, as the young lady began closing her thoughts, I found a words to this effect: "I have to go now. If I had more time I'd write more." The phrasing may not have been exactly the same, but at the end of each of the twelve letters, each girl said the same thing in essence--she spoke of time and how fleeting it was.
That's when it hit me. It hadn't been the scents of home, nor the scrawling writing. It wasn't the unique papers or the various methods used to express themselves that touched me the most, it was their time. The fact that they had taken time to sit down and make me the valuable gift of a hand-written letter.
It is that I want to gush about here: time.
Our world is so fast-paced now. Most of us live in an "e" society. I haven't seen a business card without an email address or website URL in years. We use the advances of technology to keep in touch with each other at the blink of an eye. It seems like we have sped up our lifestyles in order to always seek that elusive element--more time. The more time we want, the more we do at a faster pace in order to try and secure time. Rarely do we find that extra time we seek.
Here we are as adults, always working to speed things up, make things move faster so we can sit back and possibly have more time. Time and the desire for more of it rule our lives. It mandates all our actions. We should take a lesson from these twelve young ladies. You see, they took time and they made it their own. For however long it took for them to write their sweet letters, they told time how it would be spent. Not the other way around.
When I was done reading and re-reading each of their missives, I paused. "I have to go now." "I gotta run." "Since I'm running low on time I better shut up now." These words echoed through my head. I looked at my watch. In my mind I heard the whispers that told me I didn't have enough time in my day to get done what I needed. Then I took my watch off. Setting aside my computer, putting away my files, and shoving the work I had off my makeshift desk, I found a pad of paper and a pen.
Inspired by twelve incredible young women, I took back my time and I wrote letters by hand. It's the best thing I've done with my time in eons. How could I not Gush about that?