One for the Mailman

A story about letters

When I was growing up our mailman, Nick, was a local hero. While on his route, he saw a little girl fall through the ice on a neighborhood pond and saved her life. He once showed me the laminated newspaper article, and I can still see the black-and-white photo of him standing with his mail truck, humbly beaming at the good deed.

Saving lives is the epitome of heroic, no doubt, but I want to suggest that all mailmen / mailwomen are heroes in their own right (maybe with a lowercase h) and, by that, I mean they single-handedly carry on an ancient tradition: sending letters.

In these times of emails and texts and push notifications, hell, even phone calls, the handwritten letter stands alone. It remains the most intimate, most sincere way we can communicate, short of having a face-to-face conversation—and, even then, we might write something in a letter long before we’re prepared to say it out loud.

There is nothing like getting a handwritten letter. It is raw and wild: unruly handwriting, misspelled words, poor grammar, and yet that is exactly the beauty of it. You can actually feel another person in that ink. It’s the rare medium which compliments the communication, rather than diminishes it (looking at you, Twitter).

I’ve long thought that handwritten words are the closest we get to seeing someone’s thoughts incarnate. How special to have that in your hands, particularly when that someone is far away, or no longer around. Unfold that paper, and there they are talking to you once again. This is probably why I’ve saved all of my letters in a shoebox.

Or, to put it another way, think about people from history. Consider a book called: The Collected Letters of [Literally Anyone]. What an intimate window into that person’s mind. It truly makes the past come alive. And it makes me wonder, for those in the future reading about us, will the “collected emails” have the same ring to it? Rhetorical question, obviously, and I’d venture to guess this is why a handwritten letter is still has so much power. And why it seems to be the most promising method of reaching someone who is still alive.

Fan mail has always been a thing, of course, but how many DMs is one written letter worth? 1,000? 10,000? The barrier to entry is so low. Maybe it’s 100,000. However it shakes out, taking the time to sit down, write a letter, seal it, stamp it, put it in the mail . . . that will always mean something more.

I once sent a letter with a story I wrote to Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia. The story was about rock climbing (I had also worked at Patagonia while in college) but, really, I just wanted an excuse to tell the man that I admired him. To my great surprise, he wrote back.

Ascent did not, in fact, want to publish my story, but Yvon’s encouragement to keep writing and climbing (literally / figuratively) has never lost its luster.

Speaking of fame, it’s worth mentioning that a number of noteworthy people have worked for the postal service: William Faulkner (a true man of letters), the folksinger John Prine, and even a pre-Dunder Mifflin Steve Carrell. Check out this official and entertaining list of esteemed postal workers.

This talk of letters may all seem quaint and antiquated, but isn’t that the point? The antithesis of email, the opposite of efficiency, the antidote to getting riled up when someone hasn’t responded to your email within two hours. In other words, the things which make letters obsolete are also what makes them endearing. Multiple days to send, multiple days to reply . . . that kind of space relieves the pressure of our split-second digital communication.

Maybe it’s no surprise that the last person to regularly send me letters was my grandmother. There were the usual suspects—birthday cards, holiday cards—but also completely random things: interesting newspaper clippings, minor holiday (i.e. Halloween) cards, or notes for no real reason at all.

Now that she’s passed, they’re pretty much all I have left of her voice—which means my mailbox is full of bills, grocery coupons, and solicitations from the local HVAC guy who really wants to replace my furnace. That’s a real waste.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell is said to have written over 100,000 letters in his life. (For those counting, that’s five letters a day for 54 years.) I’m probably averaging three/year right now. I think we’d all do well, myself included, to sit down and write a letter to someone we care about, even to simply say “I care about you” and nothing else. I’ll start with my mom.

Here’s to bad handwriting and good relationships.

Martin