The power of the pen

Stop buying cards and start writing them!

A few years ago I gave up on buying cards for holidays, birthdays, etc. If I’m being honest this was less of a decision and more of a necessity since I had forgotten to buy a card for some occasion and was left with no option but to actually write something myself. So I dutifully got out a correspondence card and wrote an appropriate message.

I don’t actually remember what the first occasion this happened was. Most likely it was Mother’s Day (I have a bad record of remembering Mothers Day). However, I do remember how difficult writing that card myself was. It’s so much easier just to let the writers at Hallmark write something for you! After years of delegating my personal messages to people I’d never met, I’d forgotten how to properly express myself on such occasions. The writing muscle had atrophied, and it didn’t like being called upon again!

But that’s not quite right either — it’s not the writing that’s hard. It’s really encapsulating your emotions and thoughts. How do you really express what a mother, wife, father, sister, or child means to you? How do you properly say thank you for the thousands of things that they have done to make you the person you are? Is there really a card that expresses how proud you are of how a child has grown over the past year? How can a card possibly do justice to the feelings you want to convey on these occasions?

But that difficulty is precisely why it’s so powerful to write a personal message and not rely on someone else to do it for you. However hard it is for you to write these things, no one can really do it better. A poorly written personal message from the heart always beats a “Happy Mother’s Day” added to the most beautiful card that you just bought.

I won’t say I’ve come to enjoy writing these cards — like many people I find it hard to find the right words to convey what I want to. Practice makes it easier but I wouldn’t call it easy. However, I have come to respect the requirement that you really spend the time to think through what you’d like to say to that person. We don’t really have that many occasions that require us to take a step back and express ourselves to our closest friends and family. It’s easy to go through life dealing with the here and now — but it’s important to step back and say “thanks” or “congratulations” or “I’m proud of you”.

So the next time you have the opportunity to buy a card for someone — write one instead. Enjoy the challenge, revel in the difficulty, and dig deep to find the best words you can. I promise you the recipient will appreciate the effort — and you just might find that you appreciate the chance to reflect as well.