I was just watching this movie called The Last Letter from Your Lover on Netflix.  I’ve only had about 20 minutes a night to watch it – so hopefully, I will be done within the next couple of days.  But it is pretty good.  Aside from a plot that connects mid-1960s lovers with two lovers of today, I am reminded of the power of the written word.  Letters, exchanges of thought, back and forth between two people – with great emotion.  The kind of emotion that could never be matched in a text or a post.  I figured in the 1960s, when those letters were the best they could do, folks had to get it all out onto the paper and then wait days for a response.  There was probably less ghosting back then, and people didn’t get pissed if you didn’t respond within a minute.  Stamps were cheaper then, too. 

Reading and writing seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly.  But truth be told, good writing involves more reading than it does actual writing.  Technically, 90% of the writing process is reading what we write – repeatedly, clarifying words, checking punctuation, and even reading our passages aloud to critical friends to ensure that our message is going out with some coherence and clarity.  And that’d be the problem with the technical conventions of writing – the apps will soon gargle out the messages we want to send in our voices.  I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that Grammarly saves me a boatload of time.  Hell, just eight years ago, my dissertation chair had to sit me down and talk to me about the number of commas and dashes that I used in my writing – and guess what…I still do.  I got my doctorate in Education, not literature. 

I have to ask you…is it at all possible that what might go out the door with technology, which thinks and writes for us, will be critical thinking, creativity, individual voices on paper, or the ability to coherently express the most important things that we have to offer one another on paper – empathy, emotion, love, or passion?  Kids don’t pass love notes in the halls anymore, you know.  What I’d spend an entire study hall doing is now done in acronyms and memes.  So, when I opened my real mailbox not long ago and received a handwritten letter, I was amazed.  It wasn’t a letter per se. Instead, it was a series of notes written on scraps of paper, only some with dates.  So, I had to go about piecing them together to get the sequence right. 

Another point that I’d like to bring up is Valentine’s Day.  It is rapidly approaching, and the florists will be busy.  Hallmark just pumped out the cards with the red envelopes, and if you get to Target now, you can get your kids the cool Valentines before they are gone. Well, that is if your kids’ school still allows the Valentine’s thing.  But I have a great idea…. buy some construction paper, a glue stick, and glitter, and make a Valentine for your loved one.  Maybe a construction paper picture frame, too – which would truly be caring enough to send the very best.  Believe it or not, that slogan turns 80 this year. 

You know what creativity really is – at least, according to me – it is a form of expressive language.  And in the age of the phone that does everything for us – we have to find ways for our kids to think out of the box, use their imaginations, and feel the great joy of sending messages in ways other than Streaking on Snap.  If you don’t know what that is, punch it into the Google. You have less than five weeks to think of how you will get your Valentine out – so start thinking about it.  Because if you do care enough to send the very best, I guarantee you aren’t buying your words at CVS.