The intimacy of a letter

I have lately been fascinated by the idea of letters.

I have even started writing a few of them to my close friends and family. As a form of communication, this extended, solitary meditation addressed to a single person has no real modern equivalent. A text message tends to be a short update or response; a phone call lacks the solitary nature of the internal stream of thought; and email, which could have been the closest analog, ended up becoming basically a logistics medium.

There is, I believe, something uniquely intimate about the solitary nature of a letter. It communicates, “I devoted this lengthy stream of consciousness to you alone, which cost me both time and attention,” and, being a form of writing, it is a little window into someone’s mind—there is an intimacy to the written word that conversation alone can never achieve. It is this costly kind of focused attention which I find so charming.

I would bet that almost anyone would be delighted to receive a letter in the mail, and would happily take the time to read it and enjoy it; I doubt they would find it burdensome in the least. On the other hand, I suspect it is much rarer to find anyone who is delighted by a long text message or string of texts. Somehow it feels much more like a chore, and you could probably reliably predict a negative correlation between message length and the likelihood of a response—i.e., if you send longer messages, people are less likely to respond (I have actually done a bit of this experiment already).

And that is just a very interesting thing: why do we find a long text message so much more burdensome than a letter?

There are probably a multitude of reasons for this.

The non-verbal rewards that our biology has evolved to seek—eye contact, physical presence, etc.—are entirely lacking in texting. I find myself much more eager to have a conversation with someone in person than to exchange texts; I would also much rather have a phone call, as it is much more engaging. But none of this explains why a letter does not have these same shortcomings. It is probably because letters are generally more intimate and substantial that they are more rewarding. There is an idiosyncrasy to the choice of paper, ink, handwriting, margins, spacing, etc. through which we feel the stamp of the person on the other side.

I think we perhaps resist the longer texts instinctively as a reaction against a certain invasiveness that their immediacy creates. Every message invites a response of comparable length and frequency. If someone sends me a very long text, I feel somewhat obligated to return the favor of attention to them; but because my reply would be received on a device they carry with them at all times, I anticipate they might respond fairly quickly, seemingly inviting an acceleration of conversational cadence. If I respond with an equally substantial message, the conversation may become untenable; but if I do not respond with a message of commensurate length, it can be perceived as a slight because I have not reciprocated their investment in the conversation. Hence the feeling of resistance / burdensomeness associated with longer texts is an antibody to the expectation of an unsustainable conversation flow. The default equilibrium, then, tends toward short messages of a controlled cadence (updates, memes, etc.), and away from the kind of long, thoughtful discussions that were commonplace in letter correspondence.

It is remarkable to consider how distinct this is from previous times in history. To think that we live in a world where you “live in the pocket” of every single person you know is unprecedented. That is a degree of immediacy which has never existed before in man’s history—to have that kind of instant channel directly into someone’s attention, anywhere, and at all times. I felt a little shocked recently when my friend described to me what it was like coordinating with someone before cell phones—you had to just meet at the agreed time and place, and if one of the people didn’t show up, there was nothing you could do. It was so hard for me to imagine, so integrated have these things become in our lives.

There is something, then, about the constraints of the delivery mechanism that shapes the social etiquette. The slower cadence of letter-writing created what I believe is actually a healthy space for this intimacy to develop. A balance of space is an essential precondition for all healthy relationships, but the immediacy of our devices makes it difficult to maintain this balance. I think there is a real sense in which the technology makes it more difficult for relationships today to settle into a stable equilibrium—which, incidentally, helps to explain how a generation of terminally online and ‘connected’ people can simultaneously feel more isolated and lonely than ever.

In a world where everything happens so fast and the constant stream of cheap dopamine floods our nervous systems and bombards our attention, it is a revolutionary act to cultivate forms of communication and connection that encourage this kind of slow, thoughtful reflection.

We all long for the intimacy of connection. We want to be understood. We want to be heard.

I believe we can all benefit from the intimacy of a letter.