What makes a great letter?
A letter doesn't need to be witty or speak great truths about life. Letters can't always recount great adventures and daring deeds. And a love letter doesn't have to be the greatest love letter ever written, as long as the love it expresses is true. .
A great letter may be profound or exquisite, but it can also simply be one that was written just for you. This letter fills you with anticipation as you remove it from the envelope and devour the words on the pages. A great letter may simply chronicle the details of everyday life, sharing life stories. Life letters.
In a New York Times editorial from 2011, "The Fading Art of Letter Writing", Catherine Fields wrote about her mother-in-law's letters, which she eagerly anticipates. She writes: "Her letter often takes four or five days to reach me but the feel of it instantly breaks through time and space. Sitting with the letter in my hands, I immediately envision her: There she is at the dining table, a cup of tea to her right, the radio switched off or turned down, her thoughts flowing through her fingers and onto the page."
Her mother-in-law, who had recently been widowed, writes about the weather, the kindness of neighbors, the bureaucratic hassles relating to her husband's death, the condolence letters she has received. Writing through her grief, says the author, was an expectation for her generation ~ courtesy prescribed that such letters be written. I believe that the healing power of writing was thus preserved by social convention.
We admire the published letters of famous people, especially when they are full of wisdom, humor or historical significance. But we can also relish the simple correspondence that connects individuals regardless of what they write about or how well they craft their sentences. Fields calls a handwritten letter a creative act, because it is a visual and tactile pleasure, but also because it is "a deliberate act of exposure, a form of vulnerability, because handwriting opens a window on the soul in a way that cyber communication can never do. You savor their arrival and later take care to place them in a box for safe keeping."
All of us can write great letters. All we need is time and intention.
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