In this era of e-mail, mobile phones, internet communities and web text, I sometimes feel I get an overload of messages. It is so easy to communicate with each other these days that we feel we must keep contact almost 24/7. As a result the texts and notes we send are becoming shorter all the time and communicating less and less.

Before the whole internet boom, people wrote letters. And that was just over 10 years ago. I lived in Finland at the time and e-mail was something that sounded very futuristic. The only way of keeping in touch with my family and friends back home was by writing letters. Every day after school I would go home with this feeling of anticipation. Would there be mail waiting for me? I’d feel on top of the world when, walking into my room, I’d see an envelop on my desk and very disappointed when there wasn’t anything. I still have all of those cards and letters, two shoeboxes full of them, and I love reading them again from time to time.

Coming home from work today, I was going through the mail. My eye fell on an envelop that stood out from the normal bank statements and bills. It was a letter. A real letter, like the ones I used to get in the pre-internet times. It’s a bit silly, but I was so happy with it. It touched me that somebody sat down, wrote me a letter, stuck it in an envelop, put enough stamps on it and walked to a mailbox instead of sending a quick e-mail.

Don’t get me wrong, I love getting e-mails and text messages and I don’t think I could cope without the internet at this point. But it makes me sad as well that people don’t really take the time anymore to sit down and write a card or a letter anymore, that most communication is digital these days. So I’ve given myself a small mission for this weekend: to go into town, buy some nice cards and send them to people that matter to me. Hopefully it will put a smile on their faces, just like today’s letter did on mine.