Email and letter

Every early morning, Tèo, a twenty-year-old student, starts his new day by checking his email inbox, which is always full of messages from his friends all over the country and even oversea. He then read through all the new incoming mails and goes to school, leaving the job of replying those messages until late at night, before bedtime. Tèo, like a great deal of modern teenagers and youth nowadays, prefers sending email to writing letter. “It’s a waste of time writing and waiting for a letter”, as many of them claimed. Yet if they try, though just once, to write a letter instead of type an email, they may realize some spiritual benefits that this kind of traditional communication can bring.

First of all, the preparation for writing a letter shows that you are sincere and really care for the recipients. While an email-sender merely need a computer to type what he or she wants to say, a letter-writer needs more than just pen and paper. He or she needs to carefully consider which kind of paper sheets, which color of writing inks and which type of stamps to go with which type of recipients. If a teenaged girl, for instance, is to write a love letter to her sweetheart, she may choose a scented soft paper with pink ink to write. On the other hand, a boy may use dark ink and letters in large scale to write to his granny, who is certainly not able to read tiny letter or smell scented paper sheet. This somehow sophisticated preparation, as objected by email-senders, takes time too much. Yet it’s worth it, for the recipients will know that you have taken great care in sending such letters to them.

Waiting is boring, yet sometimes can lead to great surprise. With email, you know for sure that your message has come to the specified address right after your clicking “Send”. You, therefore, have no chance to experience the feeling of waiting and looking forward to receiving the reply for your mail as does in writing letters. Imagine you are eager to receive the reply from your close friend for so long a time but it’s yet to come. You may think hopelessly that it’s been lost on the transferring. Yet one day you back home from school and find that your longing reply letter is just right there, on the table. It’s a great surprise that email-senders can never have.

Writing letter, as discussed above, can bring lots of fun and spiritual meanings. If you love the tradition and are not in the stream of this contemporary fast-moving society, writing letter is a good way for you to express your emotion. If you love modern and prefer everything to be quick, email is the better choice.