I write this on Christmas day as I sit on my bed while surfing through social media and text messages responding to the holiday greetings that come in from friends and acquaintances. Then it dawned on me how the Christmases of today are very different from those of my younger years.
I appreciate the fact that people remember to greet each other on special occasions. In fact, it is almost a crime to not greet a friend on her/his birthday because Facebook reminds us which of our acquaintances are celebrating their special day days before the actual date. All we need is to do a few clicks and voila! We have greeted everyone we need to greet, whether they are near or in faraway lands. We are not allowed to forget and this is good.
Being present in the lives of those we care about takes the least effort these days. Connecting and reconnecting with people have never been this easy.
The capacity to easily connect is of particular importance to those with family and friends outside the country. Gone are the long months, even years of not being able to converse with our loved ones. Now, not only are we able to instantaneously send messages, we can even hear their voice, or best, see them through video calls without spending a fortune. This was unimaginable a few years back.
Truly, the internet is the most wonderful invention of all time.
However, the onset of the worldwide net, including social media has also made us do things in very different ways. Come to think of it, I miss those times when we did things in more personal ways. One of the ironies of the internet is, as we try to connect and be personal in our relationship with loved ones, we often do this in less personal, even impersonal ways.
I like receiving letters—the old fashioned kind. Perhaps outside of directly telling people things in person, it is the most personal way of connecting with those important to us.
I remember the care that people put in writing letters before. We chose appropriate words because we did not like to be thought of as impolite. Letter-writing is very personal because we used to write missives in long hand choosing every word we say, taking pains that we do not commit mistakes in spelling and grammar. Correct noun-verb agreement was a must. Nobody wanted to send letters with erasures. It did not reflect well on the sender. We would rather do it all over again.
We took pride in our penmanship. We practiced writing. Nothing can be more personal than this because no matter the similarities with other people’s handwriting, one’s penmanship is distinctly his or her own. We never used “text or jejemon language.” It would have put us to shame.
When we could afford, we used nice stationery. Even folding the letter had meaning and we took care that this was done neatly and properly. We would not want to attach our signature to a sloppily written or shabbily folded letter.
Letters were kept. These were tangible remembrances of friendships and relationships. Remember those love letters neatly tied with ribbons kept by our parents? These carried memorable stories of people’s lives and loves.
Letter-writing is an art and we are fast losing it.
Now we just send a line or two of text messages, tweets and FaceBook posts. And our posts are mostly generic messages. We hardly compose our messages and when we see some that are obviously well-thought, we remark, “pinag-isipan talaga”—something very rarely done these days in the age of instant everything.
I also like greeting cards and I used to collect those that I received. Getting cards for important occasions made me feel special. There was one particular Christmas card given to me in grade six which I liked very much. It was the nativity scene and it was three dimensional! In 1970, this was extra-special. I kept the card for as long as I could but it eventually got lost when I was already in the university.
We used to go to bookstores to choose the cards that were most appropriate for our intended recipients. We took a lot of care that the message in the card truly reflects our feelings and what we wanted to say. I remember spending hours reading cards and deciding which would be liked most by my loved ones.
Besides the messages that came with the cards, it was not unusual for senders to still write their own messages, again, in longhand making the cards even more personal. Because they were kind of costly, cards were reserved only for the really important people in my life.
Cards carried important memories. We kept them because of the meaning we attach to them or because of the person/s who gave them.
Now, we send e-cards. There are thousands out there that we can choose from from the comfort of our homes or offices. We need not leave our place to send cards. But because it is so easy, the novelty has diminished.
Also, because it is online, we cannot hold and feel them as we did traditional cards. E-cards may also be easily forgotten as our inboxes, FB walls, and twitter feeds get more posts and messages. For me, while I appreciate receiving them, nothing can match receiving actual cards.
Yes, in this age and time, it is quite easy to connect and reconnect with people. Yet, I somehow feel that things are getting impersonal too fast.
I wish for the gift of being PERSONAL.
Have a meaningful holiday season, friends!
bethangsioco@gmail.com @bethangsioco on Twitter Elizabeth Angsioco on Facebook