A delivery pigeon taking a break.
Something unusual arrived for me in the mail recently. No, not an apology from the Real Estate collective for wasting my time and acres of wildlife in the printing of promotional material that, at least to my knowledge, no-one reads. And no, neither was it a letter from Readers Digest that actually did contain a cheque for $1,000,000.
I received an aerogramme.
A genuine, authentic, blue, read, and er, a darker shade of blue aerogramme. Delivered by either via pigeon-post (an airborne version version of kiwi post...)
Now some readers will be scratching their heads, hitting CTRL+T (or Apple+T if you're lucky) and heading straight to the font of knowledge, Wikipedia. (I'll help you out - here's the link.) Some more well read readers will know what an aerogramme is and be simply wondering how long it's been in transit, as surely these things are extinct, kind of like polaroid film, or Georgie Pie.
But last week, a wonder of not-so-modern communication arrived, addressed to MSO and I.
OK - so by now you've kinda figured out that I'm talking about a glorified letter. So why the song and dance?
Well, this wasn't a mail-merge, 'Dear-Insert-Name-Here' form letter that your current financial institution of choice insist on sending you three to five times a week. The amazing thing about this letter was that someone had actually sat down and taken the time to consider the contents of the letter, before committing it to paper with a pen.
Yep a pen - and to the author's credit, she didn't use any sort of correction fluid, there were no scribbles out and then even had writing which was more than legible. And joined up. But in a good way, not like this. In a day where many of us have difficulty finding the motivation and drive to use all the letters available to us, someone had not only penned a message to us, but had done so knowing that it wasn't going to arrive in my letterbox in 3.2 seconds. That it might actually take days to arrive and unlike an electronic message, this resend option required a complete rewrite.
Yippee - I got a letter. So what's the big deal? Well, to me, the big deal is someone cared enough to take time, invest money in paper, and stamp, and share a little bit about themselves.
Someone made the effort. Today, when every man (or woman) and his (or her) dog has a digital camera, someone took the longhand equivalent of selecting film stock, loading it in the camera, then after the shoot taking it to a lab then waiting for three days before picking up the developed film. And how many people actually make that effort these days.
It's easier for people to drive through McColonels Easy and Greasy Takeaways than it is to actually plan a budget and menu, visit a supermarket, farmers market, green grocer, butcher or fishmonger then slow their lives down and enjoy cooking. Today we want it now. We live in a instant society where we are available 24/7, we have reduced attention spans and need everything to be done NOWNOWNOW.
So to the author of my aerogramme - thank you. There's one coming back your way - when I can find the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment