Wistful

Recently, my father received a priceless gift in the mail. It was an envelope from an old friend, packed with all of the letters that my father had sent him. The packet contained about a dozen letters sent over the period of several years in the 70s. They were full of mundane descriptions of the grad school courses my father was taking, newborn baby stats that surely weren’t of much interest to an unmarried man in his 20s, recollections of old times spent together, and a little bit of baseball trash-talk.

Once I got over my astonishment that the friend had kept these letters for nearly half a century, I started reading. And I read, I became increasingly wistful at the loss of this once-commonplace art. I myself wrote letters to school friends in the 80s and 90s, but by the turn of the millennium, the only stamped envelopes I ever sent out were my annual Christmas cards. Back then, emails were still pretty newsy. Text messaging was new (and we had a monthly limit, remember that?) and we still called old friends to catch up without setting up a time a month in advance. Call screening wasn’t a thing, and though we didn’t know it back then, we really weren’t that busy.

How things have changed. 

We have all the modern conveniences in the world, but we still can’t seem to find time to relax. To connect the way my dad and his buddy did when they took 15 minutes to sit down and write a letter. A letter directed to only one person, and not a mass email or, worse, a social media post meant to update everyone on your life in one fell swoop—from your mom to your most casual acquaintance.

Yes, I’m wistful. 

I’m wistful for personalized, one-on-one conversations that aren’t interrupted by an SMS or a calendar ping from the cell phones that feel less like communication tools and more like babysitters who make sure that we don’t spend too much time without them. This art form isn’t lost. It’s still in reach. But it requires a concerted effort to get there. To eschew the online posturing of Facebook and Twitter—and even Nextdoor. To be real, for just a little while.

But much as I’m wistful, I’m also addicted. Addicted to my phone, to the internet, to social media, to all the shallow, surface-level interactions that I’m sitting here condemning. And just like a drug addict needs to go cold-turkey to succeed, I’m not going to get the realness I crave by keeping my drug nearby.

I can sit down and write that newsy letter to an old friend (I’ll have to text or DM her for her mailing address first; so long has it been since I’ve indulged in letter-writing!), and I will. But first, I’m going to make an effort to reconnect with the family I’ve got around me. I’m going to do that by leaving the devices behind and getting away with them. 

Backpacking in a beautiful locale is a great way to do this, of course, but it’s not the only way. Leaving my phone at home when we go on our annual beach vacation is another way to ensure that I focus on the important people around me and not on my Instagram feed. Or just making an effort to take a long walk together once a week, and really talk about everything that’s on our minds. 

The point is to slow down and remember what’s going to matter to me in 20, 30, 40 years. It’s not going to be the number of views on my blog dashboard, or how many comments my Facebook post received. I won’t even remember those things. What will always be real, though, is the relationships that I build with my loved ones. And that’s not something I want to be wistful about.