The world becoming smaller isn’t exactly a good thing. It has taken a lot of good old stuff from us. I hate how letters have gone extinct. Weren’t they a product of immense yearning? You wouldn’t waste it with your regular small talk. In a limited space, there were so many things to scooch that you would always come up with the most important things to write. It would only mirror your best thoughts.

So many days of silence broken by everything that needed to be said, it is a marvel how a letter reflected how much a soul missed another. It was the most pious form of communication. You use every thought that goes missing when you are around someone or thoughts that fail to come out for fear of how they sound when they come out.

There was something poetic about reading them too, to read them in their voice, a voice you have been so fond of listening to. You empathize with the writer and you become that person, taking it in as it was written. The rereading to feel as if being caressed by their warmth, relating to their mindset and marveling at how the brain functions.

It was a complete package capable of changing human behavior, the very viewpoint of a situation like an idea thrown in your backyard to mull over. It brought out the thinkers in us, it made us who we were, who we are supposed to be – the most powerful species in the universe, philosophers with the power to change the world.

Letters used to be intimate. They felt like a warm hug when they arrived at our doors. They spoke of a promise even when they were closed. The mystery of what words lurk inside an unopened epistle kept us on our toes. The magic hid amidst the crux of emotions and affection in the bushes of amity. Not everyone fully expressed the joy they felt on receiving one but they experienced the ecstasy of their hearts running with it wild. Like a child springing through the couloirs of meadows holding a message in their hand, shouting at the top of their lungs, “We got a letter! A letter!”

Think about it, the written word is hands down the most effective tool to ever exist. Words wane. People take their spoken words to their graves, but history was written on some leaflets for posterity to read. Written text holds the power to change every human perception.

Today you miss someone, you can approach them via phone. Not a lot of thought is spent on what needs to be said. Conversations have gone candid. Meaningful words have gotten lost in humor. Nothing is solemn anymore, and that is so sad.