Earlier this week I stumbled across this YouTube video made by a woman who talks about a few different things related to letter writing. There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about the video, but she does talk about how reading someone else’s letters is like only hearing one half of a conversation. I’ve never thought about letter writing like this before, but I think she’s kind of right. If you inherit a box of letters from a family member, you’re only getting half the story.

Wouldn’t it be an interesting exercise to sit down with all the letters I received from someone (say, my sister) over the years, put them in chronological order as best as I could and tried to piece together the conversation based on what one person has to say? The thing is, there are probably things I’ve written over the years that never received a response, and things that my sister mentioned in passing that I never responded to. I can guess what I wrote, but I’ll never know for sure.

A handwritten letter is a mystery. Only the person who has it can ever truly be certain about what it says. Everyone else is simply left listening to a one-sided conversation.

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