Writing still a better way to send messages

JAKARTA (JP): "I've just talked to the minister!"

"Aw, c'mon, just change his diaper."

"Put it in the frying pan and don't forget to add some salt."

Those odd snatches of conversation were overheard in front of the rest rooms at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport; the first point where the owners of cellular phones can conveniently satisfy the urge to talk after a long flight.

The existence of cellular phones has made it easy for people to talk to one another. Now that little black box is stuck to one's ear almost everywhere because people need to talk all the time. I didn't really know how important it was to talk until I recently sat in the waiting room of a dentist.

The room was so noisy that I felt like it was a dealing room of the Jakarta Stock Exchange. A businessman was yelling at his manager, calling him names; a middle-aged woman was shrieking coquettishly; and a young man sitting next to me kept telling his girlfriend how nice she was and how much he loved her.

My, if only that young man had put his words into writing, he could have made a beautiful letter that his girlfriend would put in a beautiful frame and keep all her life.

I left the waiting room with my untreated toothache, wondering what was happening to people nowadays. It seems there is nothing they do but talk (This, mind you, had nothing to do with the talks during the campaign for the general election.)

"People don't write letters any more," complained a social observer. "Letters will soon become antiques."

I can't agree more. I am an ancient type of person who enjoys reading letters and keeping them for future rereading.

I once persuaded my oldest son, who lives in Ujungpandang, to write us a letter instead of calling. Sure enough, his letter came three months later. And, the content was not more than six sentences. That's apparently what he could have said in an hour- long phone call!

"Why should I bother to write if a simple phone call can deliver the message better," he reasoned when I complained about his "telegram".

"Writing will become an extinct activity in the next two generations," said a sociologist.

"The trouble is," said a senior high school teacher who always finds it hard to encourage his students to write, "communication nowadays is so easy that writing a letter is deemed impractical."

Whatever the reason, I still believe that writing is a better way of delivering a message. By writing, there are always possibilities to correct errors. But once words are blurted out, you can't change them.

When I first fell in love, I always wrote letters to my girlfriend. Each time, I put the letter in a match box carefully stuck to her yard fence. The answer came in the same matchbox, stuck at the same place. We hardly talked because, in my day, it was not "polite" for a young man to talk to a girl. When we eventually got married, we had a stack of letters that could have made a best-selling novel.

Now, young people do not have to use match boxes to send letters to their lovers. Everything is convenient when it comes to sending letters. They can even send them through the hi-tech e-mail. Unfortunately, they do not write.

Writing can also prevent damage to a relationship. I once read Abraham Lincoln's tips on how not to lose friends. One of them is: "If you are angry at somebody, put your abuse in a letter. It does you good. But, keep the letter for yourself."

What Abe meant was, you will feel better after writing a nasty letter to vent your anger. This way, you don't have to hurt anybody. And if, later, you need to talk to the person you are angry with, you can do it in a better atmosphere. You'll even laugh at the letter you've written.

My experience has proven that what Abe said is right.

I once lost a good friend because of an impulse, yelling into a cellular phone in the middle of a heavily congested Jakarta road. Of course, you don't have to stop using telephones. All you need to do is get rid of the (darn) cellular phone if you are not in a good mood. And, start writing before this activity becomes obsolete!

-- Carl Chairul