Brain Health – 2.0

To follow my musings of last week, there is another thing that we may be forgetting as the years go by: writing long hand.

            I received a note from a relative in the mail recently. A very nice gesture to be sure, but I had trouble understanding what was written. The letters were not properly formed—certainly not like the round letters we all practiced in the first grade—but I did eventually make out the message.

            I found it sort of sad that my relative has lost the beautiful penmanship for which she was famous. This is an intelligent person in her forties who has no health issues, but because of her work she is on a computer for hours at a time. Perhaps she was rushed when she wrote the note, but I think it’s more than that. Like many people today, there is no need for her to write long hand. After all, we have e-mail and all the other media for communicating electronically. So we are no longer practicing writing on a regular basis.

            After I got the note, I began to ask around to see if people had given up writing by hand. All those I talked to said there was no need to do so. They said they don’t even write notes inside Christmas or birthday cards anymore because they send e-cards.

            I wonder if the fact that I find it sad that people are no longer writing by hand makes me an old bird stuck in the past? I don’t think so. There is something so wonderfully personal when someone takes the time to write a letter by hand, instead of typing it, don’t you think?

            One of my sons acknowledges that he has very bad penmanship. Always did, it seems, so when I asked him if he ever writes by hand, he said that he no longer does. Not even short notes. “I want people to understand what I have to say!”

            Things are a changin’ as the saying goes. Perhaps we—meaning I—need to concentrate more on the benefits of our new age rather than bemoaning what is being lost. At least, I will try!