Writing still a better way to send messages

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