If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

I’m exhausted but cannot sleep, why this happens I will never understand…so I find myself in front of my computer. Back in the day I would have found myself holding my journal in my lap. The journal that I painstakingly kept…long hand. It’s so much easier to type. I seem to have this love/hate relationship with technology…

…exemplified by my personal anti text messaging campaign lately. I loved it at first for so many reasons. A great little novelty and a reason to spend all too much money on a new cell phone which boasts easier access to texting (which has now become its own verb), the quiver of excitement from hearing the special ring tone you’ve set for your special incoming texts. The wonder of what that little message might tell you that spoken words could not. But then, I began to despise it. I started to think that communication in this form would deteriorate our one on one, face to face experience. It seemed like an easy, almost cowardly, way out of having to really speak to someone. I decided to put myself on hiatus from texting.

Reluctantly, I must confess I may have changed my mind. But I don’t suppose that’s such a bad thing. There is always reason to discover the good things in everything, especially when you may have just overlooked them initially. My flip flopper attitude stems from a virtual tennis match of texting I participated in recently.

In the silence of the late evening, I lay in bed thinking about my adamant new old fashioned ways, and then I hear that special ring tone. I began to imagine life when there were no telephones. Not only cell phones, but regular telephones as well. Correspondence came in the form of fancy inked letters with a melted wax seal, stamped with a family shield or monogram of some sort (all this to insure the messenger wasn’t being a snoop while on his way to his destination). The anticipation of a letter from a lover may have made the days feel like weeks, and the weeks an eternity. And just as we always appreciate the book much more than the movie because of the pictures we paint so vividly in our minds, the mere thought of her smile from his words as she reads them would stay with him long after the pen touched the paper. It seems that because everything took longer, perhaps they were appreciated more. And that wasn’t so bad.

So what does this all have to do with modern times I asked myself? I realized that if I took a step back, I might find the very qualities I’d written off, because of our hurried world, staring me right in the face. Turns out, there could be many similarities in those feather quill letters and the texts I’ve received. They were just shorter versions…and of course, I was receiving them at lightning speed. No horses or messengers or carrier pigeons. But the wonder and imagination were ever present. Dare I say there was even something romantic about talking to another without actually speaking? With the inescapable romance of a dark and stormy evening (where I was anyway) and the distance between us, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps something I wrote may have made him smile. I vividly painted my mental picture, his face highlighted by the dim light of the LCD screen on his cell phone, nimbly pushing the corresponding numbers to form the words he was about to write.

Of course text messages are a far cry from writing a letter, but I found that I liked partaking in a form of communication that telephones seemed to have taken away long ago. And maybe this technology that I love and hate so much is bringing a bit of it back.