So at the beginning of 2014, I made a personal resolution – to give handwritten postcards to friends for their birthdays. I know it sounds very mushy and all, but I felt that writing something personal, writing something by hand had become a lost art in our fast-moving smartphone society, and I wanted to do something about it.
I don’t know if you’ve ever written Christmas cards or birthday cards for people before, but there was a time when I did. I think it was when I was in school, very free, and sending snail mail was a novelty. But it forced you to stop, sit down, and think. It forced you to think about what made that friend special enough to warrant a card from you, and to think back to all the good times you had.
And that’s what a handwritten card essentially means, right? It’s an investment of time. We’re so used to using money (ie buying things) to show our care and concern for each other. True, the time spent buying a thoughtful gift is also an investment of time. But I kind of wanted to show my friends that I treasured them enough to forgo something fun I could do, and write a note that could not be replicated in any way, shape, or form.
So I think I wrote about 36 cards this year. That equates to 3 postcards a month. It might not seem very much, but when you’re busy, wah lau. It’s an extra half hour of sleep or lunch or even just randomly and pointlessly surfing Facebook that you have to carve out. Sometimes you just have that fear of picking up the pen to write, because you’re not sure what you have to write.
But if I had another chance, I would have done it all over again, and here’s the five things I learnt from it.
1)You really need to schedule time to write
There were several times where I thought “ah heck I’ll just write their card before I meet them” and I completely forgot about it, and ended up giving them their postcards late (I personally met up with most of my friends to give them their postcards), some even a few months late.
When it comes to giving a portion of your time to your friends, you need to put it in your calendar and stick to it. We might think we have lots of free pockets of time, which we sort of do, but that gets easily sucked up by just lazing around and doing nothing. After all, you can always write tomorrow, right? Wrong.
2)You don’t meet your friends as frequently as you think you do
At one point I had a backlog of 10 postcards I had not given out. I think I was too busy with work or the former significant other or something like that, but I didn’t realise how little I was meeting my friends until I opened my file and the cards spilled out.
As mentioned earlier, I intended to give out the cards to my friends – since I treasure them, it stands to reason that I meet them frequently, so I would definitely be able to give it to them in a timely fashion. But that’s not true, and meeting up with friends more often is something I’ve learnt to try and do in general.
3)It’s difficult for a guy to write to guys
It’s not that I don’t know my guy friends that well, but it’s really, really hard to write something touching and genuine and meaningful to a guy who’s your peer. Maybe it’s because we generally trash talk each other when we meet, so it feels odd to go into a different style of communication.
That’s not an excuse for not writing to your same gender, though. It’s because it’s awkward to acknowledge emotions to other dudes, that it’s all the more important to do it.
4)You repeat the same premise
And this is out of fear of the fact that I have nothing to write to my friends. I actually repeated (albeit rephrased differently) the premise of my postcard to every single person I wrote to. In hindsight I should have taken more time to slow down and write something more meaningful, but I figure if I do this again this year I don’t have to explain everything all over again.
However it means I need to write a longer, fresh set of emotionally resonant messages to friends, which is tough to do. Tough, but still enriching nonetheless.
5)You kind of expect a personal acknowledgement after sending the card
This is really selfish, but I was kind of sad when friends whom I gave a card to didn’t thank me for it privately later. Mainly because most of my friends did that. You might think that “hey you did it altruistically, why are you expecting a pat on the back for it? Doesn’t that mean you did it for the glory and gratitude?”
I’ve thought about this long and hard, and my reason for this is that writing is a personal, private experience. Every time you write something, you expose yourself a little to the world, you reveal your vulnerabilities to an audience (of one, in this case), and you give others a chance to hurt you..
Because you give a little of yourself to the person, you want that… acknowledgement. You want it to have mattered to that person, because they mattered to you. And when they don’t, when there’s no after-postcard message, it feels that they haven’t validated you personally as a friend. It may be just the writing, or they might not actually think that way, but that’s not how it feels.
So ultimately, this is what it’s reinforced to me. That writing is such a personal, fragile affair. There’s no reward without risk though, and the joy of seeing your writing appreciated, even by one person, is something that still brings me great happiness each time it happens.
Is the joy of appreciation worth the risk of inaction? It’s up to you, but for me, writing will always be worth it.
Should I do it again for 2015?
My photos for this post are completely random by the way.
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